


Exceptional

by iblankedonmyname



Series: Ids, Egos, Superegos [4]
Category: Farscape
Genre: Anal, Androids, Aurora Chair shenanigans, Bondage, Breathplay, Butt Plugs, Clones, Consensual Kink, Developing Relationship, Dubious Consent, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Falling In Love, Femme Fatale, Filicide, Flirting, Gaslighting, Glove Kink, Happy Ending, Heartbreak, Hurt/Comfort, Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Jews In Space, Mariticide, Masturbation, Mind Control, Mind Control Sex, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Oral Sex, Pegging, Physical Abuse, Post-John-Crichton Earth, Psychological Torture, Russia, Scorpius on Earth, Smut, Sounding, Suicide Attempt, Threesome - F/F/F, Verbal Abuse, Voyeurism, jealous ex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:53:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 26
Words: 87,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24998623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iblankedonmyname/pseuds/iblankedonmyname
Summary: She was an exception and without exception.Scorpius meets a Russian boxer in the Uncharted, and like with Crichton, she is more complex than he initially assumes.
Relationships: Scorpius (Farscape)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Ids, Egos, Superegos [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596439
Comments: 72
Kudos: 7





	1. Maneater: Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iterations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iterations/gifts).



> Harvey was mad he wasn't in this story, so I let him name the chapters. The asshole picked the tracklisting from Hall & Oates 1982 charts topping album H20. While I enjoy the album, it's not really the right _mood_ for this fic. If you want a song _that is_ in the mood, go find Reveries by Karen O and Danger Mouse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story follows the series. You don't have to read the other stories. But if anything seems AU, it's because it is a little. This is a long story, take it slow, drink water, sleep when you need to, and enjoy.

# Maneater

## Part 1

Scorpius woke abruptly in his quarters. The room was dark except for the viewport into open space and the dimmed lights of interactive panels. As it should be; peaceful, restful, the expansive hushed quiet of a spaceship in its night shift. Scorpius had felt anything but ‘at peace’ for going on seventy-seven solar days. He’d been counting. It was disrupting his sleep cycle. It was disrupting his focus.

He uncoiled himself from his bed to move towards his desk. His mostly bare skin was white but every dench or so had a black dermal, barely the size of a stud. He had recently gotten this upgrade. Previously he relied on a temperature suit to deal with his hybrid physiology issues. Even in the dark, alone, he felt this new sensation of being exposed. He was beginning to suspect that he would always feel this way.

At his desk, he opened a new log. 

…Once again, I am unable to sleep.

He stared at the line for a moment. He thought about the numerous logs he’d written recently that started this way.

...It is because of her.

He deleted both sentences. Perhaps if he wrote out their entire history, he would be able to gain clarity on what was keeping him awake. He was a scientist after all. This was emotional territory but he had to deconstruct it.

...The record of Natalia Nikolayev is listed as Beth Goldberg on the human colony vessel Safe Journey. According to record, she is a six-foot-four-inch tall, human female with brown hair and brown eyes. She weighs one hundred and thirty-two pounds (log note: this is out of date). Her birthdate is on July 2nd in the Earthen year, 1992 AD. She is an organ donor. Beyond this record, she has a horizontal scar on her lower stomach and a gold canine tooth.

He stared at this for several microts. It relieved nothing.

...I miss her.

He hissed in disgust before deleting that and trying again.

...For some time, we lived together. I expected treachery and I received it. She told me very little about her past and explained nothing about her false name or her history while on Earth.

Scorpius was able to stomach this sentiment better. He searched his desk for a small box. Inside he removed a small diode and placed it on his temple. Ten legs snapped out and embedded sharply into his skin. With the short-capture attached, he’d be able to upload memory clips to his log.

...I will start from the beginning. 

The short-capture clicked. 

Three cycles ago, in this memory, Scorpius was back in his black thermal suit. It covered everything except a pair of cold eyes, a sharp nose, dark-lined lips, and jutting chin.

Scorpius had recently attracted the attention of several uncharted territory politicians. The group was trying to construct a unified governing body. Scorpius was skeptical. It was complex work if he could avoid all the initial glad-handing. On this night, he wasn’t so fortunate. 

He was sitting in the VIP area on some official meet-and-greet. The location was a gambling bar where the waitresses wore next to nothing while delivering chill bottles to their section. For some reason, their political hosts had the bright idea that their guests needed to unwind. Scorpius never unwound, but he had to give the impression he would try. 

He didn’t gamble. He barely drank. However, everyone else was. Already they were howling happily at a boxing match. No matter how loud the din was, Scorpius could hear the bones crunch in each punch. It was an efficiently cruel sport, and it put a small satisfied smile on his face. It was a good reminder that every galactic species, no matter how sophisticated they were, were ultimately all twisted animals. The loser of that match was taken off on a stretcher. The crowd went wild.

The next contenders entered the ring, a luxan and a sebacean, both female. Scorpius was only mildly interested until his aide mentioned the sebacean was actually human. He was aware that John Crichton’s visits to Earth over the last twenty cycles had brought human colonizers, but they were in small numbers, barely more than a few hundred in the last decate.

The luxan seemed to hold the upper hand in the fight. She was continuously landing hits, while the human's offence was next to none. After several rounds, Scorpius got the sense that the human was teasing the luxan, and the luxan’s energy was draining. The crowd was shouting for the luxan to finish her when the human suddenly caught a sloppy jab from the left, twisted the arm, and dislocated the luxan’s shoulder. In the disorientation that followed, the human knocked her out with a series of quick punches.

A hush fell on the crowd, while the referee counted. When at last he lifted the human’s arm to confirm her victory, the bar exploded in shouts and applause while she trotted off the stage.

The fights continued. The night was dragging for Scorpius until a collection of winners were shepherded into their VIP section. The human was among them, wearing a blue tracksuit with white stripes up the arms and legs. They received a series of congratulations and were offered drinks for their success. The human hung off to the side to light a cigarette. She had a shaved head and an oval face with small scars. Despite having just pummeled someone unconscious, she held the cigarette delicately in her cloth-wrapped hands.

Scorpius tried to resist the pull. Decates ago, he merged with a wayward clone, named Harvey, that had absorbed nearly all of John Crichton’s memories. Due to their merging, Scorpius had picked up an addiction to cigarettes, among other things. His curiosity and the smell of tobacco eventually won. He moved from his own dark corner to her’s.

“There aren’t very many humans in the uncharted. What brought you here?” Scorpius opened.

She had very black eyes even in the darkness of the VIP section. They focused on him. She took a drag of her cigarette and blew the smoke in his face. He let it billow around him, unphased. He could tell she was considering her answer very carefully.

“My planet is small. Small-minded. The galaxy is not small. I was ready for a change.”

“But there is no human colony anywhere near here either.”

“Maybe I wanted to be alone? Same people, same problems. No people, no problems.”

“I’m a person. We are all people here. We have many problems.” Scorpius reminded her archly.

She flashed a smile then. Her gold tooth glinted.“You are an alien. I will gladly accept alien problems. New. Fresh. What are your problems? These politicians here?” She gestured to the conversing _aliens_ in front of her.

“I work with them.” Scorpius firmly stated. He wasn’t about to talk about work with this woman. He wanted her cigarette. He wanted her to keep blowing smoke in his face. But her conversation wasn’t bad either. She wasn’t a thing like Crichton.

“Ah ah, but you are not _one_ of them. I can tell.”

This amused Scorpius. “Hmm, no. I’m not one of them.”

“No, I didn’t think so.” She narrowed her eyes at him, scoured his face with her dark heavy-lidded eyes. “What species are you? I don’t recognize them all yet.”

“Some might consider that question invasive,” Scorpius said blandly.

“No one I’ve run into yet.” Her eyes stayed focused. “Did I offend you?”

“I am a scarran-sebacean hybrid.” Scorpius wasn’t offended. It was simply a warning. He had grown used to his heritage being a topic of conversation.

His statement didn’t phase her at all. Her smile spread. “I know sebacean. He’s a sebacean and he’s a sebacean.” She pointed out individuals in the room. “But a scarran? Oh yes, I’ve seen one, a heavyweight. He had a very bad temper. He had a very large head that you don’t have. You are lucky.” She blew the smoke up this time.

Lucky was a strange word choice, but she was a... _foreigner_. He preferred to stay away from himself as a topic. “Where are you from on Earth?”

“You know humans come from Earth?” Her eyebrows shot up. Apparently the name of her home planet wasn’t well known. “I get so many, ‘ _so where is humanland’_ , even I forget where I am from sometimes.”

“I know of Earth. I came very close to seeing it once, but what country are you from? What language are you speaking?”

She considered him again. This time painstakingly scrupulous. At length she divulged. “I’m speaking Russian. I’m from Siberia. Do you know of Siberia?”

Scorpius did not know of Siberia. “What is Siberia like?”

“Cold! Giant! Isolated! I didn’t know I was already a child of space until I got out here. Even space is warmer than Siberia.”

“I doubt that is true.”

She laughed, a breathy, tingly sound. 

“Oh really? The next time you go to Siberia in the winter we can compare notes.” She smiled smugly at him. “My name is Natalia. Only Natalia.” 

She offered her hand.

Scorpius told her his name, and they shook hands. At least Earth introductions were the same from America to Siberia.

She stubbed the dwindling cigarette out on the wall behind her and drew out a crumpled pack. Scorpius attempted to not appear interested. Her eyebrow twitched as she smiled again. 

“Oh? You know what these are, don’t you? Would you like one?” Natalia whispered closely.

Scorpius’s expression didn’t change.

“How about a trade? I give you one and you tell me how you know _so much_ about humans, hmm?”

Scorpius didn’t see a downside to this trade. He wanted the cigarette, and most of the information he would divulge was common knowledge. He plucked one out of the pack. She did the same and then drew out a matchbox. She pressed a match into his breastplate and dragged it down quickly. It sprung alight.

“Please, your sigareta.” As he brought the cigarette’s tip into the match, he became aware of her proximity. She was a few denches taller than him. He felt pleasantly crowded. She then lit her own and blew the burnt stick out. “Now it’s your turn.”

Scorpius savored the cigarette. He shut his eyes heavily on an inhale. If only they were available for sale in the commercial districts, he would become a true addict. Perhaps with Earth turning into an outpost on a galactic trading route, that day was approaching. 

When he blew out, he offered Natalia her information. “John Crichton. I know about Earth because of John Crichton.”

She sneered. This wasn’t the normal reaction.

“You know of him?” He couldn’t hide his amusement at her response. 

“Goody-two-shoes American man thinks he can give Earth the universe. Americans are all the same. Arrogant, petulant, know-it-alls that don’t know that life for most is made of hardships. But yes, I know of John Crichton. If I met him, I’d shake his hand. If only to make his knucklebones grind a little. I am endlessly thankful.” She said sarcastically.

“Have you met him?”

“No, but everyone on Earth has heard of him. I wouldn’t be out here if he didn’t come back and show us _all the wonders he had seen_. He changed the world.”

“Some would say he changed the galaxy,” The black hole, swirling millions to their atomic-level deaths, came to Scorpius’s mind. 

She frowned and sucked morosely on her cigarette. “Russia and America have never seen eye-to-eye. It is a bore to you I am sure. I wish someone else had been the first to space, but that is old history talking.”

“Sputnik?” That was a name from his clone’s memories.

She smiled at him again broadly. It made her cheeks rounder. “Yes, sputnik. You know John Crichton well?”

This time he felt her smile in his cooling suit. It was invasive but familiar. He rather liked Natalia. “I know him intimately.”

“Oh ho!” Natalia’s smile split her face ear-to-ear. Perhaps she was more like John Crichton than he originally perceived. Scorpius was reminded that humans adored constant expression. “I must know more.”

Scorpius had regaled few with his viewpoint on John Crichton. Mostly because few people asked him for its entirety. So much was readily available from other sources, and Scorpius figured that his intimidation played a factor in what people asked. 

Natalia was so new to the galaxy, everyone she met must’ve appeared extraordinary. To her, they were all _interesting aliens._ His notoriety meant nothing. She was very much like Crichton in this way and likely didn’t have the same rough entry that he did. Her wide-eyed enthusiasm for the uncharted territory was refreshing. She had no concept of its history yet, recent or otherwise.

They talked for some time. 

An item began beeping in her pocket abruptly. She drew out a communicator, flashing madly. “Shit. Unfortunately, I need to go.”

“Oh?” This was a slipped exclamation. 

“Yes, I’m sorry but it’s true. My daughter is very strict about my curfew.” 

Scorpius blinked, mildly stunned. A female boxer from Earth was out on her own with a child. It went against every understanding he had of the purpose of colonies. He was intrigued but the conversation was over.

“It was pleasant speaking with you Natalia,” he concluded. He admitted to himself he was loath to return to the surrounding politicians after her departure.

“Likewise,” but she went on, “It’s funny, and I’m sure you’re not aware, but on my planet, if someone was dressed like you, people would make assumptions.”

“What kind of assumptions?” The cigarette had burnt out long ago, but it still zinged his senses. He would entertain that statement. He had a flash of himself in an Australian bar wearing a hawaiian shirt. What would she think of him if he were dressed for an Earth beach?

“That you’re a sexual deviant.” Her lips curled.

Scorpius glanced at her abruptly. She was flirting with him; that was a surprise. He thought for a moment, and responded, “Instincts are rarely wrong.”

“Oh. Hmm.” She pulled out a writing implement and wrote out some symbols on the back of a receipt. She offered it to Scorpius. 

Curious, he reached out to take it, but she pulled it back. 

“Nuh-uh-uh. Back home, if you really want someone to call, you give them a kiss. But this is unknown territory, and I don’t know what that would mean to you.”

Her charm was practically palatable. Scorpius could feel it in his marrow, right next to his suspicion. Still, it was a harmless proposal. “I don’t often kiss, but if you’re offering, you can lick me. Right here.” And he tapped the hollow of his cheek.

Natalia smiled so widely her nose scrunched, but it slid from her face as she softened her focus. Scorpius felt her breath before the pliant, wet drag of her tongue. At the top of his cheekbone, she nipped him. 

“Was that good?” She hovered closely.

“Oh yes. Perfect.” He purred.

She pulled back and re-offered her contact information. “You’re warmer than I expected.”

Scorpius took the offered number without any resistance this time. “I am beyond expectation. I can assure you.”

“Then I don’t expect you to call.” She smiled again, threw her bag over her shoulder, and left. 

With her gone, he remeshed with the politicians, but the thought of her lingered like smoke. He fiddled with the strip of paper in his hand and did for a moment consider disposing of it. However, there might yet be some advantage in getting to know her better.


	2. Maneater: Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The featured mind control device comes from Season 3 Episode 1: Season of Death.

# Maneater

## Part 2

Scorpius continued to narrate for his log. He had gotten more comfortable, stretched his legs out, leaned back, and closed his eyes. There was a chance he would fall asleep while working. He had in the past, but that seemed elusive to him now.

...The boxing bar became a common destination for after-arns decision making among the politicians. I didn’t need her contact information, she often won and would appear in the booth later. She didn’t mention that I had failed to call her. Our conversations were diverse. If I maneuvered her properly, she told me about her life in the uncharted, but never anything further back.

...Her daughter was named Andromeda. She was born during the cycle-long trip aboard Safe Journey. Natalia called her Andi. The girl was four cycles old. I didn’t question the lack of a father’s presence, because ultimately it held little importance. She talked about the trip through a wormhole. She talked about the building of the colony, and her departure, but wouldn’t go into what motivated her to leave.

...Eventually, even the most talented fail. Natalia was no exception. On the fourth match I witnessed, Natalia lost.

The crowd was bloodthirsty that night, howling grotesquely at the charrid, whose fists were bleeding along the knuckles. Natalia was limping and had a cut in her forehead that blinded her on one side. She was defending skillfully, but with one small misstep, the charrid crunched her already twisted ankle and elbowed her in the temple. She fell like a tree, but while the charrid howled her victory at the crowd, she stirred and with help, left the stage.

Scorpius realized quickly that her loss meant she would not be visiting their section. A small voice niggled him in the back of his mind that he might want to check on her. He hadn’t enjoyed watching her lose. There was little to gain in seeing if she was alright, but as he scanned the group of politicians, there was also little to gain staying here. The wrong people were trying to make concessions. They wouldn’t miss him.

It was easy to make it backstage. His aide had made arrangements with security. When he found her, she was sitting upright on a slab table with a healing stick thrust into her head wound. A medical attendant was carefully unwrapping her broken ankle.

“Do they heal everyone? That’s very generous.” Scorpius asked her.

As he asked, she had appeared to be meditating, but his voice snapped her eyes open. For a moment she almost acted scared, but she settled when she caught sight of him in the doorway.

“No one is generous. Losers have to pay for care,” she winced as her ankle was freed, “I didn’t expect you to come looking for me.”

“Have you ever spoken to a charrid?”

“Yes, they’re horrid, aren’t they?” Natalia removed the healing stick from her forehead and the wound sealed. She touched the now seamless spot. “Miraculous! I have no cigarettes for you.”

“A shame.”

Instead, she drew out of her inner pocket a glass bottle with clear liquid sloshing inside. “Know anything about vodka? On Earth, there is a stereotype that Russians drink it instead of water, but the truth is, any Russian would, if given the chance.” It clanked on the table when she put it down.

“I rarely drink.”

“A shame, but live a little. There is no bite with this brand.”

Scorpius moved further into the room to examine the bottle. Natalia’s eyes had sunk close. The attendant was preparing her broken bone to be reset. Natalia gripped the edge of the table and with a fluid motion, the attendant shifted the ankle back into place with an audible snap. Natalia groaned. She was perspiring, breathing deeply through her nose. 

Scorpius’s lip twitched. She was very attractive like that. He considered the bottle again but put it down. Seeing her get a bone reset was enough of a reason to come visit her. She didn’t have to offer him contraband.

“You never called,” she spoke quietly when she finally opened her eyes.

“I’ve been busy.” Scorpius was always preoccupied, and he communicated with relatively no one outside the scope of his work. It didn’t seem worthwhile to his progress.

“Are you busy now?”

She had him there. He had left his evening responsibilities to speak with her. He didn’t like being caught so blatantly. He scowled. 

“Ah-ha, you aren’t!” She smiled cheerfully through her continued pain, “so you should offer to take me out.”

“Is that so?”

Natalia nodded sharply. “Yes, definitely. Some have said I’m quite charming.”

Scorpius huffed, but he could see no easy way out short of simply denying her. “No one has made that claim of me.”

“They are mistaken.” Natalia was smiling smugly again. The attendant had jammed a healing stick into the swollen flesh around her ankle, but Natalia didn’t budge.

“And your child’s curfew?” Scorpius sought blindly for an excuse.

“Don’t worry, I’m a big girl. I’ll get home on time.”

Scorpius was trapped. While speaking to Natalia was better than debating politics with the current people upstairs, he didn’t expect to get ensnared in an _outing_. Internally he was irritated, but deeper, past his meticulously constructed walls, excitement stirred. At length, he agreed.

“I’ll just change! Don’t go anywhere! Five minutes!” Natalia hopped off the med table onto her newly-mended ankle.

Beyond the boxing ring, Natalia wore a gray bodice that had sleeves but left her shoulders exposed and black breeches with boots. Over it all, she draped a synthetic blue fur coat. She looked swaddled.

Scorpius didn’t know of a single place on this moon where he could take a woman and not have to deal with the threat of recognition. There would be questions. He wanted to avoid them. Now outside, the night was crisp.

Natalia weaved her arm into the crook of his elbow and wandered down whatever street was the most empty. Scorpius wondered if this was when she revealed herself as a petty thief attempting to rob him. However, this didn’t happen, instead they walked, talked. At a certain point, Scorpius realized they had made it up the steps of his current residence, into his rented rooms, and Natalia was pouring them both a glass of vodka.

“Humor me?” She nudged his hand with the glass.

“I’ve humored you enough,” he replied back coolly. The walk had relaxed him.

She snorted. Took back the offered glass and shot the whole thing without a wince. 

“Fair.” She scanned the room. The building was new construction made of metal, glass, and stone. It was modern, dark, sleek. “This room is dead,” she said decisively.

“I don’t live here,” Scorpius replied almost defensively. “My primary quarters are on a ship in orbit.”

She sipped her own glass of vodka. “Quiet.”

“Yes.”

“What’s that?” She pointed at a tiara of diodes on a nearby table. It was radiating with red light and was the only object in the room that he had brought with him.

“That,” he murmured, “is a Neural Projection Oppressor. I invented it.”

She put her glass down and wandered over to take a closer look.

“Quite a name. It does what exactly?” She leaned over it curiously.

“It is colloquially called a mind-cast. Although that’s not accurate. It takes the neural net of the wearer and projects it into another, via a momentary spinal tap, oppressing the victim’s neural net.”

Natalia stared at him for a moment. “You _invented_ mind control?”

“No, there are many forms of mind control. I invented one of them.”

“Oh yes, of course,” she frowned for a microt. Her finger grazed the spider-like diodes on the crown. Her eyes were bright, curious, but when she spoke this time, she whispered. “What do you see when you are in someone else’s mind?”

“I see what the person I’m possessing sees,” Scorpius thought this much was obvious.

“Yes, but what do you see in their mind?” Natalia was insistent.

“Ahhh. One gets only a vague impression. Others have described it to me as sensing a ghost.” Scorpius didn’t believe in souls per say, but the idea was agreeably poetic. There were plenty of other logical explanations for sensing ghost-like entities in the galaxy.

She touched the control crown with reverence. “Would you tell me,” her fingers twitched away abruptly, “...what you see when you’re in my mind?”

Scorpius didn’t expect this. As he had boarded the elevator to this floor, he had considered the possibility that Natalia was trying to sleep with him. But bodies were one thing. People were cavalier when offering their bodies to relative strangers. Offering control of their minds, however, was rare at best. 

“You’re suggesting I enter your mind and take control of your body?”

She was observing the oppressor with lidded eyes like it was a book she was reading. “Do you feel a person resisting?” 

“Yes,” Always he felt resistance. Scorpius had never used the device on a willing individual.

“If you felt it from me, would you stop?” Her eyes dug into him with a previously unseen intensity. 

It felt like a physical touch. Scorpius would’ve liked that shot of vodka now. Minds generally resisted when one forced their way in, but if the resistance was absent, the experience might be very different. 

“Yes, I would,” Scorpius promised. If she was offering, he would cherish the opportunity. His plunge into her mind may be very brief. Minds had their own instincts after all, outside of the owner’s control.

Natalia reeled in her intense gaze and refocused back on the device in front of her.

“Then yes, that is what I’m suggesting, but you must tell me what you saw after.” 

“I will. Bring it to me.” Excitement bubbled within him.

Natalia brought the crown over and settled it on his head. 

“Good. Kneel,” he adjusted the diodes. 

She knelt and offered the back of her neck.

Scorpius was rarely this satisfied with someone so quickly. He touched the back of her exposed neck, tracing each bump along her spine with an index. She was pliant under his touch and didn’t appear nervous, not a twitch.

The spinal tap was heavy in his hand. He had wanted to improve its weight for eons after its invention, but he never had time. Normally he’d stabbed it into someone, a victim he needed for a moment’s espionage. With Natalia, he wanted to waylay her resistance, so it would be better to not shock her physically. He placed the needle between two high vertebrae and slid it in.

Natalia’s mind was deep like all sentient things. Without her fighting him, he could feel more than the usual. The sensation was tidal, cool but something was hidden in the dark. It reminded Scorpius of stories people told about being trapped under ice. However, Natalia pulsed there too. Her will was a throbbing, instinctual heat even in the glacial river of her mind. This _presence_ would normally be going haywire at Scorpius’s intrusion. But uniquely this time, it was calm.

When he opened his eyes, he was in Natalia. He looked at her hands then turned to look back at himself seated behind her. There was no resistance. His hands, Natalia’s hands, touched the back of her neck. There was only a hint of blood on the pads of her fingers when he drew them back. He licked them clean.

He stood fluidly. She had a well-cared-for body. Her energy level was excellent. There was no residual pain from anything chronic. He glided back to the location of her vodka glass.

“Natalia?” His voice was Natalia’s, accented, hushed. It was sensual even speaking like her.

Natalia’s oppressed neural net perked up at his question. She was alert and aware inside her mind still. It was absolutely fascinating.

He sipped her vodka. It did taste good, refreshing, crisp, and it lingered on the tongue with an unexpected sweetness. “I’ve tried your vodka.”

Her will fizzled warmly, but then her presence did something odd. It began to flatten and spread. The warmth initially offered was liquifying. Her instinctual remnant was convalescing lower. 

This was new for Scorpius. He stood very still and tried to decipher what was happening to Natalia’s presence. “Natalia?” 

The response was arousal.

“Hmm,” Scorpius sighed into it. The heat pooling in Natalia’s sex was a very interesting sensation. “Do you like being controlled?”

Her answer was an errant pulse in her cunt.

“Oh,” he shuddered in Natalia’s body, “I see.” Scorpius touched Natalia’s neck with her hands, brought them gradually over her bodice-wrapped breasts, and finished on the inseam of her pants. He cupped her there. Need surged up through her body.

He undid her breeches slowly and took her hand to the delicate skin of her groin. Moments earlier, he had felt her wetten herself inhabiting her body like this, but touching it was another confirmation. When he had collected a finger’s worth of moisture, he brought the digit back to his mouth and sucked that clean too.

A euphoric surge shot through him like a rocket.

“Your enthusiasm is very attractive, Natalia.” He slid her hand back down to finger her. 

While he was familiar with human females’ desires, Crichton’s memories again, he had never experienced them so intimately. She was throbbing under his touch. He was numbing with pleasure. Her body groaned, or perhaps Scorpius did. While he normally preferred to drag orgasms out, arousal was building in his own body. He liked the idea of finishing her quickly and pulling his mind back. Then he could observe her on the floor, basking in her afterglow.

The peak was imminent. Her folds were slippery when he rubbed her clit one last time before she clenched with a sharp breath. Scorpius rode out her shaking climax. It lasted briefly, but he savored the sensation of her damp thighs from inside her mind. When he reluctantly returned to his own body, his unslackened arousal hit him in the gut. He immediately regretted leaving Natalia’s softly pulsing completion.

On the floor, the mentally-returned Natalia was thunderstruck. She rolled herself up to a crouch, so much for Scorpius’s idea that he could watch her stay languid beneath him, and went to his codpiece’s buckle decisively. 

Relief rocked through Scorpius. She unbuckled him quickly, and thankfully, ogled his erection briefly before licking the length of him. Now his body surged with need. He gripped the seat of his chair as she swallowed his cock to its base.

Natalia had a very pleasant mouth. The full, wet tongue worked its way up as she sucked down. On a full completed mouthful, she licked over his tip with dutiful pressure. He attempted to stabilize her pace with a hand to the back of her neck, but regardless of her speed, her technique was superb. His lower abdominals were coiling tighter. He didn’t want to succumb yet. 

But then she added her hand to pump the base of his member, he deliriously rolled his hips into her grip. He gritted his sharp teeth and drooled. She pulsed his tip, licking off the precum. Scorpius tried desperately to recover some semblance of control on his spiraling sensitivity. The more he worked to get it back, the higher his arousal climbed.

A full-body shudder plummeted to his core, and he popped into her lovely mouth. She sucked the spend off diligently, yanking another shiver from his coiled muscles. Finished, she laid her cheek on his suited thigh and cleaned the spittle off her lips with a finger.

“Pleased?”

Scorpius sighed back into speech, “Hmm, yes, and you?”

“I like your invention.”

“That’s not normally how it's used.”

“I can imagine,” she murmured. “Scorpius, this might be another invasive question, but?” There was a pregnant pause. He acknowledged consent with a sound. She went on. “Where are your balls?”

Humans. They never had any awareness of when something was not-the-time. Scorpius scowled down at her. She responded to his glare with a darling innocence.

“They are internal,” he dropped sourly.

“But don’t they get hot? That’s why humans have them outside.”

“Yes, they are very hot. That’s why they are sterile.”

She flushed red abruptly. “Oh. That was a very invasive question, wasn’t it? Sorry.”

Scorpius grumbled. He was already annoyed but then her alarm went off, which increased his annoyance tenfold. She lifted away from his thigh to fetch the timer in her coat. He wanted her to stay longer so he could lay waste to her ability to form sentences like the one she just asked, but that wasn’t possible now.

“I need to go,” she said, embarrassed.

“Fine,” he was ready to forget about her for now. Scorpius was rebuckling his codpiece when her hand stilled his arm.

“Thank you for this incredible evening, Scorpius,” she kissed his cheek. “I hope to see you again soon.”

He moved away from her then, but as she opened the door, he called back. “When you get downstairs, ask the doorman to get you a transport on my credit. He has my information.”

She flashed an enormous smile at him. Her tooth glinted. “Dasvidaniya, Scorpius.” The door closed behind her.

It was microts later that Scorpius remembered he hadn’t told her what was inside her mind.


	3. Crime Pays: Part 1

#  Crime Pays

##  Part 1

Like Scorpius had fallen asleep that night three cycles or so ago, he fell asleep now, sitting upright in his desk chair. When the night arn lights began to warm like sunrise, he jerked awake. Wisps of a dream hovered in his vision before dissipating entirely. He spent the entire day trying to chase after the remnants of what he’d forgotten. 

The following night, he was once again unable to sleep, but at least now he had a task to work on. He sat back down at his desk and opened his log from the previous night.

...I called Natalia back the next day. I didn’t want to give her the impression I had forgotten our deal. Part of me wanted to get her messaging system, but she picked up. We exchanged pleasantries. Then for a microt or two there was silence...

“Last night you left before I could tell you what was inside your mind,” Scorpius believed he should get this over with as quickly as possible.

Natalia rubbed her arms nervously, “Oh, yes, I’m sorry. It slipped my mind. Forgive me.”

“Ah,” Scorpius shifted a little straighter. Natalia’s reaction was strange. Still, this was a simple enough deal to conclude. He could easily be done with it, so he moved on without question. “The inside of your mind was very similar to other sentient aliens I’ve possessed. There was your subconscious mind, which you represented as cold and shifting, and your conscious mind, which was the definition of alive. Beyond that, there was nothing of note. Was there something you hoped I’d see when you offered?”

In the comm monitor, Natalia was pensive, but her mouth was downturned. “I thought that it would be....worse.” She shook her head like she was convincing herself of something. “But that’s not what you saw!”

Scorpius was very interested in what she expected him to see and was about to ask for more detail when a child entered the monitor view. The girl had soft brown hair, big eyes, and her mother’s oval face. She wrapped her arms around Natalia’s neck.

“Mommy, I want to play pirates.” She buried her face in her arms.

“Mommy is busy right now, Andi.” She lifted her daughter’s little face by the chin and tapped her nose. “Say hello to Scorpius, sweetie.”

Scorpius tensed. 

Thankfully the girl didn’t appear too pleased with the idea either. Her long-lashed eyes looked him up and down, and she went back to burrowing into her mother. “Nuh-uh.”

Natalia’s smile was one Scorpius imagined was reserved strictly for mother’s to look at their progeny. The only expression in the galaxy that was purely unconditional. Even towards a child that denied her request, she smiled with brimming affection. Scorpius couldn’t look away, but a familiar sadness sunk into his chest.

“Alright,” Natalia practically ignored Scorpius with her child in her arms, “let me finish this call, then we can play pirates. Just wait a little bit longer.”

“Okay,” Andi murmured agreeably, and slid off-screen.

“Sorry about that,” Natalia spoke simply when her attention returned. “She’s a bit shy with adults. If you were another kid, she’d be talking your ear off.”

Scorpius was relieved Andromeda wasn’t ‘talking his ear off.’ “What does playing pirates entail?”

Natalia snickered. “I speak in a jaunty accent, cover one eye, and chase her around the apartment, which isn’t very hard. It’s a small space. She screams the whole time.” Her adoring smile returned while she reminisced. Scorpius was warming under his cowl. “Then I make her walk the plank, which is really just jumping off the sofa, and we do it again.”

“And that is fun?”

“Oh yes, very,” Natalia nodded with a finality Scorpius could barely understand. “She’s my whole world. I’d do anything for her.”

The sentiment was familiar to Scorpius. Parents often expressed this in regards to their offspring. He had nothing to contribute, but thankfully she moved on to some other aspect of her day. The conversation continued in a different direction, and when the call did eventually end, Scorpius didn’t recall his early discomfort, only his continued interest.

During their first cycle of slowly starting to understand one another, comm calls were common. Scorpius wasn’t always on Santu Sansu, the moon she called home. With interstellar distances between them, delays longer than ten microts made conversation irritating, so often calls were only brief messages.

...Throughout the cycle I collected some of my favorites. I have erased them now since lingering on her voice is distasteful. Whatever we had is over. However, for this log, I will recall what her messages often entailed. Sometimes they were brief.

Such as: “Hello! Just checking in. I lost, which was a drag. To a Sebacean, can you believe that? I’m exhausted. Going to bed. I hope you are well wherever you are.”

Sometimes they were longer. “I ran into some Israelis today! Sorry I’m calling late by the way. I stayed out with them for a bit. They came to the uncharted on a trading vessel. Israel is such a small country too, but all the way out here I run into them! Imagine? I don’t think they thought they’d meet another citizen either! My hebrew is so rusty! They said they’d keep in touch, but I don’t expect them to. You never know though, people surprise me sometimes. That’s all from me. How’s work? Lilah tov.”

Scorpius would respond to her messages when he could. However, when he wasn’t in a direct conversation with her, his responses were to the point. He didn’t see the reasoning behind sharing trivial passing thoughts. Every time he sent a response he had the distinct notion that she would tire of him quickly, and he shouldn’t expect a follow-up.

Statu Sansu was not only the home of Natalia but was the general port for Statu Grandu, a vital shipyard planet for most interstellar ships. It was no coincidence that the politicians’ concluding meetings happened on the orbiting small moon. If Scorpius was working towards a united front for running the uncharted, it was imperative the trading organizations agreed. 

After all, they were the only non-military body that Scorpius had to convince and they were the only group already doing a decent job uniting different species. Their union was made of kalish, sebacean, luxan, scarran, charrid, nabari, delvians, and more. If Scorpius could name a species, chances were good the shipyard union already had the variety on their payroll and their signature on a terms of agreement. Statu Grandu was a powerful ruling body indeed.

Because of this, Scorpius was able to visit with Natalia often even outside of his normal appearances at the boxing bar. He preferred meeting beyond those times now, so he didn’t feel like he was shirking his responsibilities to his hired cause. She extended her curfew to be with him later into the evening. He learned a lot about her in those quiet, relaxed moments post-coitus.

“Where did you get this scar?” Scorpius traced the horizontal line on her lower abdomen. Natalia was sprawled in his apartment’s leather conversation pit, her corset half off, the fastener’s slightly bent. Her pants were somewhere, and her underwear, possibly eradicated from existence. Scorpius was, of course, fully clothed. He wasn’t about to expose himself to heat delirium for a little, light recreation.

Her sigh was substantial. She slid her hand over it as if to remember it was even there. 

“I had a c-section.”

“And what is a c-section?” Scorpius reiterated.

“When a baby is upside down, during birth, it can get stuck and suffocate. It’s easier for the baby to come out head first, otherwise, legs and arms get caught. The doctor will try to turn the baby, but if they can’t, they’ll cut your womb. Pop! Take the baby out. Sew you back up. That is a cesarean section, a c-section.” Natalia spoke quietly.

“Hmm….” Scorpius continued to touch it. In the uncharted, they didn’t cut babies out of women. Earth sounded quite primitive. He felt an odd affinity toward her scar. 

Human fertility was more complicated than sebacean. The ancients did a good job altering the peacekeeper genome to remove the worst of it. For example, human female periods sounded like an absolute waste of energy and materials. A human female bleeds for four to five days every month because they _aren’t_ pregnant. 

Scorpius described that sebaceans have an egg cycle but no period. They can become pregnant and keep the fertilized egg for up to seven cycles. If they want the baby they go to a doctor to release it and their pregnancy lasts a few days. Natalia was absolutely indignant about peacekeeper genetic superiority and left in a huff.

Days later, while Scorpius was off-planet, she sent an apology and a quick musing that she was glad his mother had the ability to create something as marvelous as him in only a matter of days whereas she took a slovenly nine months with Andi. Then she thought for a moment and surmised unless his mother was scarran. It took a few attempts for Scorpius to finish that recording. Natalia simply didn’t know about his troubled birth, and he wasn’t sure when he would tell her.

However, she learned quickly about his temperature regulation issues. It was impossible to be in sexual relations with a woman and not be constantly aware that the other party wanted to undress him. Humans were no different in this regard, possibly they were more so. After all, there were few species that didn’t equate sex with exposure and touch. Scorpius had seen those species mate and he wasn’t interested.

Natalia never mentioned she minded after their first few encounters, but every now and then she touched him in a way that suggested she was thinking about his skin under his suit. She was feeling out his hidden muscles with her mind’s eye. For the first time in a long time, he considered the possibility of moving beyond his temperature suit. It was possible. He knew it was possible. If he wanted to be in perpetual pain for the rest of his life, he could do it at that very moment, but there were other, more scientific, directions he could take.

This inconsistent messaging and meeting went on and on. Scorpius was thrilled by their affair, but also perpetually distracted by it. He wasn’t sure how they could continue to meet the way they were. It was unsustainable. He often considered cutting ties simply because that would be easier than maintaining them.

However, a solution appeared in a tumultuous upset during the election cycle for the shipyard union. The unified council predicted the reelection of the current union president, but a new candidate swept the votes with a conservative platform that was more insular and aggressive but offered the workers more benefits. At the time, the election rattled the politicians. Scorpius stewed in a rage that the last few months had been for nothing, but under the threat of his work dissolving like his employers’ hope, he offered to focus on Statu Grandu and usher the new president into an agreement.

Originally, Natalia wasn’t on his mind when he made this proposal. He was going to spend time between his ship, Statu Sansu, and Statu Grandu, and he was going to work on this new president alone. However, it was nice to spend more personal time with Natalia. She seemed pleased that he was more available. He even met Andi.

The union president wasn’t very accepting of Scorpius’s persuasions. The Kaleshi considered him to be a power-hungry radical and on a personal note, a creep. Scorpius had butted-heads with these assumptions before. After all, the president wasn’t wrong. He was a radical, and he could be a creep, but that didn’t mean his ideas were paltry. Still, if Scorpius had to appear more like a traditionalist to make the president listen to him, he would. Tradition was easy enough to manipulate. One of the things the new president harped on was the importance of family in harboring strong values.

Ultimately, it was Scorpius’s aide’s idea. Scorpius could no longer get an audience with the president one-on-one, but he threw regular galas for his constituents. The aide recommended Scorpius actually take a plus one to avoid looking like a pariah. Scorpius was hesitant to involve Natalia directly in his work, but for appearance's sake, he asked if she was willing to attend. Natalia was more than willing, she was crazed with excitement, but then faltered, and asked if he could help her buy an appropriate outfit. 

On the night of the gala, Natalia entered the hall wearing a shimmering ombre dress. She immediately asked who among the guests Scorpius found most valuable. He gave her a quick briefing of the union president’s staff and the shipyard’s board. Surprisingly, when Natalia slunk off to get refreshments, he found her microns later speaking with the union president! 

She had gotten him a meeting with the man as if it was a trifle. Apparently all it took was for her to speak highly of Scorpius, inquire about the president’s home life, and share pictures of her daughter. Natalia then had the audacity to ask who else she should speak with. Scorpius remembered well that he stroked her open back covetously and ushered her to a group of board members. It was a productive event.

At its conclusion, while Scorpius had become fond of her dress, he was eager to get her out of it.

Scorpius’s aide absent-mindedly mentioned the following day that if Scorpius could accomplish this much with a date, imagine what he could accomplish if he had a family. Immediately, the aide’s blood drained from his face and he apologized profusely. Much to the aide’s benefit, the statement hadn’t affected Scorpius negatively, instead, he was actually imagining the possibilities. He waited several days before approaching Natalia with the idea. 

“You want me to live with you? Me and Andi?” Natalia held a dubious expression while propped against the peer’s railing. It was her favorite spot to walk. Statu Sansu was mostly ocean. What little land existed had a rocky coastline pitted from an aggressive tide. In the night, the white caps of the waves were the only thing that captured the peer’s light. 

“Yes, if that’s agreeable.” Scorpius had thought about the possibility that Natalia wouldn’t agree. It was forefront in his mind. But any benefit to his work had to be pursued to exhaustion.

“I don’t know if it’s agreeable. I didn’t think that was something you wanted.” Natalia turned around to watch the waves break. Her brow drew down suddenly. “I don’t want Andromeda to have a father, you know.”

Scorpius definitely didn’t want to be Andi’s father. He joined her at the railing. “That’s not my intention.” However, his mind snagged on the rest of her declaration. “But what does that mean? Andi must have a father somewhere.”

Natalia stared at him blankly. “Convince me you want to live with me and my daughter, Scorpius?”

And Scorpius didn’t particularly enjoy lying to her, so he hoped to avoid the question entirely. “Is it so absurd that I want to live with you?”

She went back to looking at the waves. “Would I have to pay rent?”

“No, I own the building and the apartment. I’d take care of the taxes.” Scorpius offered genteelly.

“I want full control over all my possessions, my money, my time, and my daughter. If I feel, even an ounce of pressure from you, regarding any of those things, I’m leaving.”

Scorpius couldn’t help but agree to the list, but it was an abrupt flip for Natalia who was originally wavering on the idea but now seemed so invested that she needed to layout rules immediately.

“Do you do recreational drugs?” Her eyes were suddenly digging into his.

“No, Natalia, you know I don’t do drugs.” The fire in her look unnerved him momentarily.

“Good, because if you start, I’m leaving,” Natalia left the banister and rested her arms on his breastplate. She was smiling at him coyly. Her eyes softened. Scorpius was thrown slightly off-kilter with her shift to affection despite how final her demands were. 

“And finally, there will be one gun in the house and it will be mine,” she cooed.

Natalia acted like he was threatening her with his offer. He scowled at her and grasped her wrists as if attempting to pry her off. “What is this?”

“Agree to it, and I will live with you.” She didn’t move away.

Scorpius sighed. This wasn’t what he anticipated, but ultimately, she had accepted his proposal so he should be able to handle her terms. “Fine, agreed.”

Natalia kissed him full on the mouth. Her soft lips lingered, but when she pulled back her voice was gentle. “A deal is a deal then. When shall I move in?”

This wasn’t the first time Scorpius had lived with a woman in his nearly sixty cycles of life. He had lived with Natira when he was barely out of his teens. Various female aides had lived in close proximity when he relied on cooling rods. The people he had sexual relations with while onboard space vessels could also be considered as living with him. However, sharing a space with Natalia was distinctly different, because there was no obvious hierarchy in their arrangement. If she honored a request he made, it was simply because she wanted to and nothing more. If she made one of him, it was similar.

Eventually, they established a morning routine. Natalia woke before Scorpius and made caff for the two of them. She read quietly alone until she woke up Scorpius with a cup of caff. When he was awake, she’d get Andi up and dressed for school. Then she insisted they all sit down for a quick morning meal. She’d make either a simple egg dish she called glazunya or tiny griddle cakes called blinies. At first, Scorpius didn’t like the idea of morning meal since he normally ran through till mid-day, but after eating before work a few times, he realized he preferred it.

She’d check in with Andi about her upcoming day over the table. Andi had a microcosm of friend drama at school as well as a vivid imagination. It was hard to discern what was real and what was in her head. Once Andi had given her update, Natalia would always ask Scorpius what was in the news.

When the meal concluded, Natalia would walk Scorpius to the elevator, kiss him goodbye, and wish him a good day. The pattern would reverse when Scorpius came home. Natalia would greet him as the elevator doors slid open and kiss him on the other cheek. The once-cold apartment would smell warmly of a meal. Andi might be playing a rambunctious game with Natalia or quietly playing alone while her mother stretched or tended to house plants.

During evening meal, Natalia would ask for summaries about first Andi’s and then Scorpius’s day. Scorpius’s updates were much like his phone messages, dry. Sometimes he’d be irritated and the summary would be terser than normal. Andi’s was always about something new she learned at school. She was a bright girl and infinitely curious. Natalia was always equally excited about what Andi had to share. After dinner, Natalia would read to her daughter from an Earth tablet until she got too drowsy to keep her eyes open, and then Natalia would tuck her into bed, kiss her goodnight. Finally, Natalia was free for Scorpius’s whims.

Scorpius believed this was what others called domestic bliss. The consistent predictability made him have little expectations of what to expect from Natalia, which wasn’t something he commonly had. Work was tumultuous. Sometimes disagreeable. Sometimes incredibly challenging. But his home wasn’t. Instead, it was comfortable.

This wasn’t what Scorpius expected from his life, but it was surprisingly easy to fall into. When Scorpius had to travel for work, which he often did, he would find himself daydreaming about the simplicity of having a meal waiting for him at home or waking up to Natalia’s hushed voice or her goodbye pecks on the cheek.

Scorpius and Natalia kept separate bedrooms because Scorpius had a cooling suit and Natalia preferred blankets. It was part of the initial arrangement.

After a particularly long time away, Scorpius came home one night to Natalia asleep in his bed. When the lights turned on, she woke up, groggily apologized, and collected her blanket to leave.

Scorpius caught her wrist. “Why are you here?” She was waking up a little, but she looked towards the door as an escape. He tugged her back and repeated the question.

“I missed you,” she said with resignation, “I’m sorry. Goodnight.” Then she kissed his forehead and turned to leave.

Scorpius tugged her back again. “Stay.”

This banished the sleep from her eyes. “Really?”

“Yes.” He laid down.

She was very surprised since it took her a microt or two to move back to where she was sleeping. Then she paused again as if to confirm that this was correct. When he simply shut his eyes, she slid up onto the bed and laid down next to him.

Scorpius peeked at her. She was curled up, facing towards him. Her hair was growing out in dark tuffs. They floated at gravity-defying angles. 

She sensed he was looking at her. “Can I touch you?” It was practically a whisper.

Scorpius was interested to see what ‘touch’ meant in this case. It was an open-ended request. “Yes.”

Her hand slipped between the blankets and found his gloved hand. She interlaced their fingers and then nothing. Scorpius’s pulse raced with the onslaught of tenderness, but he was nervous to break the moment. Instead, he brought the back of her hand to his lips before resettling both to his chest. Afterward, he fell asleep quickly.

The night after, staring at the once occupied spot next to him, Scorpius realized he wanted to begin the procedure that would allow him to live free of his cooling suit.


	4. Crime Pays: Part 2

# Crime Pays

## Part 2

Scorpius leaned over his desk as he pinched his brow. It was painful to reminisce like this. But miraculously, he wasn’t wearing his temperature suit any longer. He was able to be as exposed as any other bipedal, sentient creature born to either Scarran or Sebacean. He reread the last few sentences. Scorpius huffed. He was giving Natalia a lot of credit by attributing her visit to his bedroom as the moment he considered surgery.

There were downsides to being almost nude. He studied his bed for a moment. It was empty. Nothing to protect him while he was vulnerably unconscious, for example. Perhaps he should reconsider wearing armor to bed again. At this point, it was comfortable, if not also familiar. Maybe his sleeping problems had nothing to do with Natalia’s absence, but the discomfort of sleeping without what kept him stable for his entire life.

He paced over to the stand that held his mantle and breastplate, his greaves and gauntlets, his doublet. The design hadn’t changed much between being his life support and simply, protecting his life. He had asked himself at the time how he could improve on perfection. It had style too. Even his armor held memories of Natalia however. He could spend the time putting it back on tonight, or he could finish his work, run blearily through the day, and retire to sleep still wearing it tomorrow.

Scorpius dictated for his log while he spotted his reflection in the shine of his doublet.

...The first stage of the surgery was merely a test. Wires were embedded under the skin in my hands and feet, and once healed, I could comfortably go barefoot. However, what was more exciting was my touch. Everything had a richer texture then I thought.

“Hey,” Natalia swung her bareback around toward Scorpius, “zip me up, please.”

This was a different dress from the first gala. Natalia had said it was unseemly that she’d go in the same dress twice to an event like this. Scorpius had to agree. He had the credits, a dress was nothing. She had picked a diamond-studded net that poured over a tight red and black slip. Scorpius had seen it once already, and had quickly developed strong opinions about its ability to elevate Natalia’s assets. He didn’t want to linger too long on her pale back, so he reached out, and sharply zipped the fabric over her sacrum. However, his hand couldn’t help but linger as if it possessed a mind of its own. Her skin was very soft wrapped over firm muscle.

“What are you reading?” She was a vision when she turned around. Natalia had shadowed her eyelids and it made her eyes look like living embers in coal.

Scorpius glanced back to the console. “Peacekeeper aurora chair recordings. I check them weekly.”

Natalia leaned over the listings. To her, the names and dates likely held little value. “Why? What are the recordings of?”

“Force of habit. The recordings are a person’s memories, a very effective way of torture. Every now and then, there is someone interesting they capture, and I watch what the chair collects.” Scorpius snapped the console shut. He realized his other hand was still stroking her lower back, so he removed it as if her softness had no effect on him at all. 

“Natalia,” he spoke with a slightly commanding tone, “fetch my gauntlets.”

She nodded without pause, and went to the side table where he’d stored them. Scorpius liked how the dress broke up her movement into sharp lines, how the silk covering her hips glistened in the light. When she came back, he took the offered gloves. “Are you ready?”

“Da,” Natalia smiled. “The sitter will be here soon. I’ll ring down to your aide to bring the transport around.”

“Not just yet. I don’t think you’re quite ready.”

Natalia’s mouth corners sunk. She glanced down at her dress and touched her short hair. Nothing looked or felt amiss. “Oh?”

“Oh yes,” Scorpius purred. He slid a hand into one gauntlet, flexed his fingers. “But it will only take a moment to get properly situated.”

* * *

The gala was in a long glass atrium filled with jungle plants. It was lit with swarms of bioluminescent butterflies and candles on the expansive buffet. The event screamed new money to Scorpius, flashy and expensive, but the Kalish had only been freed from the Scarran’s domain recently, so he gave the president some leeway to spend his success as he wanted. Natalia’s eyes had glimmered warmly at the spectacle and she had gone so far as to mention the party’s ‘beauty.’ A praising word she didn’t use very often.

She had left him some time ago. Scorpius couldn’t see her in the crowd despite her towering height. He smirked and fiddled with a ring looped around his index finger. As he stroked it, the ring turned from blue to purple to a blood red. He counted to twenty and shifted the ring so it became blue once more.

“Scorpius.” The union president descended the stairs to stand next to him. He had the classic gold skin and red hair of his species, but he was marked for slavery across his forehead. Scorpius could only imagine what the man had seen, and he could easily imagine. He would never ask.

“Union President Darvek.” Scorpius smiled slightly. Despite his history of servitude, Darvek had done quite well for himself. He could have as many dimly-lit, garden parties he wanted, even if it was in bad taste according to Scorpius. He deserved them.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Always, Darvek. A stellar event must be attributed to a stellar host,” he replied pleasantly. He scanned the crowd again.

Darvek chuffed. “Natalia is rubbing off on you,” he sipped a drink that left a smear of black on his upper lip.

“If you say so. Have you given any thought to the latest document? I didn’t see your response in the comments.”

“Is now really the time for _documents_? Relax a little,” Darvek took a step further down the steps.

“I assure you, this is me, relaxed,” Scorpius fiddled with the ring again. “Oh and President.” Scorpius tapped his mouth.

Darvek dabbed his own lip curiously. The black mark was rubbed away. He raised his glass in thanks. “Adieu Scorpius. I have a toast to conduct.” He descended the staircase further into the jungle fronds. 

From his perch on the staircase, Scorpius considered the buffet. He spotted a tray of seasoned crab legs. He supposed it couldn’t hurt to investigate the catering’s quality. The tray looked very good, and if there was to be a toast, he might as well have something in hand. 

When he got to the buffet, the caviar smelled better. He loaded a spoonful on a dairy-smeared cracker.

“You might want to turn it down a little.”

Scorpius recognized her voice. He smirked over the table. “I know exactly where I’ve set it.” The ring was so red it was nearly black. He glanced at Natalia, whose mouth was pinched and eyes hazy.

She shifted uncomfortably. “When can we go home?”

Scorpius snorted, “You know when. It’s up to you.” He crunched happily into the caviar-heaped canape.

Her fingers tightened on the champagne flute she held. She shut her eyes for a labored breath. “I’m sure there are aliens in this room that can smell arousal, you know?”

“Possibly. Perhaps that will help you?” Scorpius said coyly. He moved closer to her bare shoulder. A butterfly was orbiting around her, casting its soft yellow sparkle on the dress’s diamonds.

“It hasn’t,” she practically hissed when her eyes reopened, sharp and fiery.

“Sounds like you need to work harder, but I’ll relent.” He lifted his hand and shifted the ring to blue. The tenseness in Natalia’s body melted. 

She grinned sourly at him. Humans and their expressions that meant so much at once. It was incredible a species could have a sarcastic, degrading smile. One that said, ‘thank you for nothing, you worm.’ Scorpius smirked again as she slipped back into the crowd. He had given her a task at the start of this. Natalia had to get three powerful trading personnel to organize a meeting with the union president. It was an intricate maneuver, but Scorpius had seen Natalia perform more complex tasks at a function like this. However, this time he had handicapped her, and it was taking longer than normal.

Clinking of glasses and a perfunctory round of applause announced Darvek’s speech. Scorpius continued to munch on his treat. The evening was going very well. He was in high spirits. The president could tell the surrounding crowd to ‘frell off’ and Scorpius’s mood couldn’t be lessened. He glanced down at the ring again and turned it back up to a healthy red with satisfaction.

The night pressed on. At length, Natalia, sweaty and visibly frustrated, returned to him. She gave him the meeting date as proof, and pleased beyond measure, Scorpius trapped her waist with his hand to lead her to their departing transport.

Natalia slumped as soon as she hit the back seat. She angrily kicked off her high heels and fell back again.

“You’re being dramatic,” Scorpius simpered coolly. 

“You try it next time,” she sassed without any real fire.

“Hmm, I don’t think I will.” The door slammed behind him, and the transport cruised off. “Come here.” Scorpius beckoned her to his side. She rolled over, rested her cheek on his armored shoulder, and sighed wearily. 

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he stroked her hair.

“What color is it?”

Scorpius peeked at the ring. “It’s too dark to say, but regardless, you’ve done well.”

Praise didn’t seem to matter to her at this point. “Take it out.” Natalia whimpered.

“What? In the transport?”

Natalia nodded. From her position, she nuzzled into his chin.

“Desperate.”

She nodded again.

Scorpius pretended to consider this predicament for a breath or two. Natalia waited patiently, but every now and then he could feel her shiver. Finally, he patted his belted thighs. “If you insist, submit yourself.”

Natalia folded over his thighs, her butt front and center between his legs. Scorpius removed a glove to slide a bare hand up her inner thigh. He liked her in formal wear. She picked becoming attire. This dress had a long cut up the back of her legs. He delved between the folds and pulled the netting and slip up over her ass. She whined for a microt, but then covered her mouth discreetly with a hand.

“Natalia, I acknowledge there was at least one alien I know of that could smell your arousal.”

Her face turned visibly rosy even in the passing city lights. “Mm?”

Scorpius liked the human blush response. It was nicely transparent. “Me.”

Natalia sniffed miserably and looked away, obviously embarrassed.

It was nourishing, but Scorpius wasn’t going to withdraw just yet. He instead pressed a finger into her vagina. She was sopping as he expected. He could practically smell her every time the ring exceeded purple even in a room that size. She wiggled back and groaned. While she made a show that she wanted the butt plug removed, what she really wanted was to release all the tension he’d created.

“I’m not going to take it out,” Scorpius admitted deviously, “and I’m not going to finger you to completion either.” 

Natalia made a sad sound.

“Straddle my thigh.” 

She did in a heartbeat. Her face was embarrassed and pained now. 

“Pleasure yourself.”

Her hips began rocking immediately, and almost within microts, the air leaving her lungs faltered. Her head fell against his neck. She was making some very pleasant sounds until finally, she keened quietly and sunk against him.

Behind her back, Scorpius shucked off his other glove. He was becoming fond of caressing her spine. There was something very snake-like about the stacked bones and the flexing ribs. But he couldn’t become intoxicated petting her like this, his hand went to his belt and pulled out a length of cord.

“Natalia.”

She lifted her head, and after her first orgasm, she appeared initially mollified until she saw the garrot. He snapped it between his hands. Scorpius watched her swallow dimly. She bowed her head as he slipped the noose over.

“Now, again.”

Scorpius felt her thighs tighten over his own. The universe was no bigger than the backseat of the transport they currently inhabited. He slowly pressed the airways on her throat closed while she ground her clit over the ridges on his thigh. Scorpius wanted to lick every drop of her sweat off her tantalizing skin, but that would make this more about him than her. She was quivering like a frail creature in his arms, but she could handle the strain. 

Natalia came, the moving cabin reeked of it. He loosened the noose, and she gasped raggedly, practically collided into his breastplate. He stroked the long expanse of her back. They weren’t far from the apartment now, Scorpius recognized the streets outside.

“Get your shoes back on,” Scorpius chided.

Natalia chuckled against him weakly. “Do I have to?”

“Yes. Appearances.”

With a small, self-satisfied grin she collected her shoes while remaining on his lap, slipped them back on. “I might need some help walking.”

He went to remove his garrot, but she caught it, tucked it down into her collar hem, and licked his cheek. But he couldn’t protest, the transport’s door opened. Scorpius stepped out first, and carefully guided Natalia out of the back and tottering on her heels, into the distant elevator.

As the doors shut, she crowded into him, bit his neck. 

Scorpius hissed quietly. “Natalia, behave. They have cameras.”

“Why does it matter? I hope they know at this point that you’re not some eunuch keeping a live-in maid.”

Scorpius snapped at her nose with his dark teeth and scowled. Natalia beamed smugly. When the elevators opened on their apartment, Scorpius and Natalia lost a few arns working off what had been built up during the gala.

In the early arns of the morning, Natalia was still awake, tracing patterns on Scorpius’s suit-wrapped chest. “I’m jealous.” 

“Hmm?” Scorpius murmured.

“That others have got to enjoy you.”

For a moment, Scorpius said nothing. It was a foreign concept to him. Peacekeepers were sometimes jealous, and every now and then, there would be fights over sexual partners, but not specifically about him.

“You are possessive of me?”

It was too dark for Scorpius to see her expression. The quiet stretched. Eventually, her stroking hands moved to grip his shoulders.

“You wouldn’t sleep with anyone else, would you? You haven’t?” 

Scorpius reflected briefly on how long he’d known Natalia. There had been a few people in the few cycles before he met her. Perhaps there was some small overlap, but since their arrangement, Scorpius hadn’t thought about anyone else. His needs were met, but also above and beyond that. He couldn’t tease out how.

“I haven’t.” 

“But you wouldn’t?” her voice was so level, it was devoid of emotion. 

“No one has asked this of me before,” he confessed quietly.

She perched upon him. He could feel the sharp weight of her elbows digging into his ribs. “Never?” Her voice quaked with a confused shock.

Scorpius didn’t like repeating myself, so he said nothing. While she waited in the silence, she posed a new question.

“You don’t care if I sleep with other people?”

This set Scorpius on edge, but the reasoning eluded him. It wasn’t something he thought about. He knew where she was often enough, but perhaps when he was away, she would. She could. It hadn’t mattered in the past. He considered saying he didn’t care, just to end the matter and go to sleep, but his paranoia crackled suddenly. The pause after her question was too long, she dug deeper.

“You’re okay with me taking pleasure from someone else’s cock?”

“You are attempting to get a reaction out of me?” Scorpius was adamantly against giving her one now, but he felt her resignation. She settled back.

“Yes. Anything. Give me anything at all,” she sounded sad.

Scorpius took a meditative breath. For a satisfactory evening, he hadn’t expected his emotions to spike like this. 

“If you have a request, make it.”

She propped up again on either side of his head and in the darkness, Scorpius could see the pinpricks of her eyes capture the window’s light. They danced. 

At length, she whispered. “Please don’t sleep with anyone else...while we are... I won’t either.”

“Accepted.” Somehow, Scorpius was pleased. He’d never been owned sexually before.

“But if you can’t, please tell me. I need to know,” she added quickly.

His frustration flew back. “I’ve agreed. Why do you already assume I will break these terms?”

She sighed. “Because people break promises, Scorpius. Don’t act like that isn’t true.”

“I agree to your second terms. Is that enough?” he huffed.

She smiled and lightly kissed his annoyed scowl. “Not yet. We need consummation.”

A wicked negotiator, she disappeared beneath the blanket, and not a microt later he felt the warm sweep of her tongue on his genital sheath. His frustration left him abruptly, sucked out with her mouth. Scorpius didn’t think about much else that night.


	5. Art of Heartbreak: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Disclaimer** : This is the chapter with sounding. Sounding means to check the depth of something or to stick rods of increasing size into a urethra for sexual stimulation. If you read that last bit and shivered, well, yes. It’s not for the faint of heart. However, Scorpius is an intense man, and I think he’d like sounding. I did research, but parts of this might still be incredibly inaccurate. There are two kinds of sounds and the one I think he’d appreciate the most doesn’t quite work with the weird lizard anatomy I gave him. Oh well. 
> 
> If you read all this and you’re like ‘there is no way in hell I’m reading that’, fair, I have marked the scene with horizontal lines. Read to the first line, skip to the second.
> 
> If instead you read all this and are like ‘hot dog, gotta try this at home’, don’t. This is not a lesson in sounding. Do research. Talk to someone with real experience. Try some entry-level urethra stimulation first.
> 
> If you read all of this and said “but Scorpius isn’t into any of that. He’s never a sub. He’s totally dominant.” Well, I disagree. A. Lot. But that’s a rant for another note.

# Art of Heartbreak

## Part 1

The following night Scorpius slept. By now, he was weary, and the previous day was more strenuous than the ones prior. He had a host of meetings that ran long before being interrupted by a bomb threat. It was a sign that the cause was building momentum now that they had rebels who opposed, but the irritation of the disturbance lingered. When he finally returned to his ship, he rolled into bed in his armor and was out as soon as he shut his eyes.

Upon waking, Scorpius was initially relieved that his logs were worthless. His sleepless nights had nothing to do with Natalia but were instead about the subconscious discomfort from being outside his cooling suit. He was minutely proud of his instinctual mind. However, repeating his success the following night failed. 

He lounged bleakly awake in his peacekeeper cot for what felt like arns, in full-armor. This time, he felt more stupid than prideful. With a dissatisfied growl, he threw himself up at last and reopened his log and began to type.

...My suspicions were always there about Natalia, but her humanity was incredibly appealing. They behave abnormally in many ways when compared to the rest of the galaxy. Their creativity, psychology, and propensity toward emotion are all unique to their species. She almost smothered my instincts with these traits, but eventually, faults in her facade began to appear. They began to heighten my suspicion that she wasn’t what she appeared.

...On a particular occasion, I watched Statu Sansu get closer through the viewport. 

It was a dark blue marble next to Statu Grandu, the orange gas giant. Scorpius had spent three solar days away, which wasn’t one of his longer trips, but he was invested in getting home. For the last few days, he’d been turning an idea over in his head. It was really more of a daydream. He’d catch himself falling into spats of intense boredom throughout the long discussion panels, and his mind filled in for him.

It began simply with Natalia’s battered but artful hands removing one of his gauntlets. They moved to the other, tugging each finger free. Then feather-light up his arms, they’d lift off his mantle. His breastplate would follow. She’d begin to unbuckle his arms, up one and down the other. Her trailing fingers would drift to the hidden catches between his hood and doublet. She’d peel his mask carefully free over his face and steel temple cap. With his head and neck exposed, she’d drag her neatly cropped nails lightly down his jugular seeking the latches on his collar. Her body would join her wandering hands over his chest before gliding lower to places yet to be exposed.

In the conference hall, Scorpius felt as cooked as a boiled egg. The daydream wasn’t a dream at all, but a selective memory. When he was planetside, Natalia undressing him was a daily reality. A few weeks prior, he’d had another surgery. It was the most time-intensive one yet and vital as it allowed his upper torso to exist comfortably outside of his temperature suit. 

At first, he disliked seeing his pale, scarred chest gridded over with the thermal dermals that kept him cool in lieu of his suit. It was a painful reminder of his deformed youth, which he had spent the majority of his life hiding under necessity and comfort. His exposed torso was even worse than seeing his uncovered head, which was altered in a previous surgery.

Natalia must’ve noticed his resistance, she was an intuitive woman. She casually mentioned one evening that it must be a burden for Scorpius to remove his armor daily, and if he needed any assistance, she’d be happy to help. His initial reaction was obstinance. But after a few more days he reconsidered. The point of the surgeries was to not rely on the suit, and here he was, clinging to it like a security blanket. As if he hadn’t defeated his self-image issues decats ago. Besides, he knew Natalia was likely the only person in the galaxy interested in seeing him bare.

Still the first time he allowed it, he had an inclination that the next day she’d be gone. Not for any logical reason, he banished the thought quickly, but he had to acknowledge it existed, for a microt.

Obviously that outcome didn’t occur. Instead, she intensely devoured his instructions on how to remove his armor, and once exposed, she wondrously caressed a path between the black dermals over his pectorals. When his skin prickled into goosebumps, which was absolutely the oddest sensation he’d ever experienced in his entire existence, she laughed, delighted. He hungrily guided her hips down into his cot for a suitable reward.

His daily dressing and undressing easily became a habit, which apparently affected his brain’s ability to focus for even short time periods away. The daydream came back again and again. It was a constant distraction, her roving fingertips, the way her lips curved in satisfaction. He wanted to tongue the length of her sternum while she clawed his back. A moment later, he startled alert again, now staring at a much closer Statu Sansu. 

Once home, Natalia was in her quarters reading. She lounged over thick dark blankets in a set of silken nightwear. When he appeared in her doorway, she smiled warmly at him and slid to the edge of the bed. “Welcome back. You must be tired.”

“I have some energy left,” Scorpius purred.

Her eyes moved up his suit. She pursed her lips. “Oh really? And what would you like to do with that energy?” 

“Free me from my armor and you’ll quickly learn.” His hand wrapped around her neck.

She hummed against his touch. “I better get you out of your armor then.” 

Having Natalia remove his armor in person was more satisfying than his mental excursions during the conference. They had swapped places so he sat on the edge of her bed. Once his boots and gloves were removed, he settled his hands behind her thighs. The process followed like in his dreams, gloves, buckles, mantle, hood, and doublet. She had to move away to lay each piece on a nearby chair. There wasn’t an armor stand in her room. Scorpius considered that there should be one for future convenience. She returned to his hands, placing them on the waistband of her nightwear. Undressing her was a significantly faster endeavor. Shorts dropped. Camisole removed. He finally did what he considered earlier and licked up the bone between her breasts. She caught his chin when he finished to angle him up to meet her eyes.

“Do as I say? Or no?” She murmured.

“Ah, you’ve made plans in my absence.” Her consideration was very pleasing, going away had more benefits that he thought.

“Not so much plans, but…” she smirked at an internal thought. “Is that a yes?”

Scorpius nodded sharply into her hand. 

“Good,” she whispered back, “I have some things I’d like you to wear.”

When he was set up and ready, Scorpius wore a metal yoke lined with four spikes on the inside of the collar. Two rods branched from the collar on opposite ends that captured his wrists. Natalia had chained him to the cold, stone floor with his legs spread apart. Despite Natalia’s earlier statement that she hadn’t made plans, to Scorpius this was a significant amount of preparation for something off-the-cuff. Natalia towering over him was the only reason he decided not to point out this discrepancy.

“Comfortable?”

“Oh yes. I recall a few times I’ve been in a similar position in the past. However, my _jailer_ has never been nude before.” He salaciously grit his teeth at her.

“Is that so? Perhaps it was because you were difficult. I can easily put my clothes back on.”

Scorpius straightened his back against the pull of the clanking chains and put on a carefully neutral face. He had no interest in seeing her clothed again. “How will you torture me? If that’s your intention.”

Natalia bubbled with laughter. “I hope in a way no other _jailer_ has _,_ but I’ll be fascinated to learn otherwise. Now the position you're in currently is perfect, so don’t move.” 

She threw her leg over one side of the yoke. The weight of it immediately dug a spike into Scorpius’s neck. It’s jabbing point was painful but nothing that would bother Scorpius, especially seeing Natalia’s cunt denches from his face. 

She tapped his temple with her index finger.

“So yes or no?”

“No other jailer has done this,” he was too focused to banter any longer. Her folds weren’t quite dripping, yet. He had a strong desire to help her along. His mouth began salivating without thought if only she would come a little closer and like she read his mind, her thigh pressed further over the bar.

He licked into her as soon as he could reach. His breath stuttered with pent up relief from the last few days. Her slick spread further with each broad pass of his forked tongue. Based on the complexity and sensitivity of the human labia, Scorpius paid special attention to lavishing his tongue wherever it could reach. He couldn’t let an area go unattended. Natalia settled against his mouth more fully, and the spikes pressed further into his neck. Without his armor, he was more sensitive to their prodding, but he wouldn’t be distracted from the task at hand.

Distantly, past the pain of the spikes, Scorpius noted his cock had moved past his slit’s opening and had emerged into open air. He hummed against Natalia’s clit contentedly with the full base of his tongue, his breath hot on her sensitive skin. She hummed back with both pleasure and the sense that things were moving along according to her design. Her fingernails scratched where his head met his neck for a moment longer before she swung her leg back over the yoke’s wrist bar. 

Scorpius was at first disappointed at the loss of her thigh before remembering, this was supposed to be a more rigorous scenario, he couldn’t expect her to simply sink into his mouth for the rest of it. As much as he’d enjoy it. When she walked away, he perked up. If her plan was to leave him there half hard with her scent smeared on his mouth, he would complain. However, she did come back, but with a leather tool wrap. He’d seen that bundle before, seeing it again, right now made his guts churn. His neutral expression settled back into place.

* * *

Natalia traced his jawline with her nail when she kneeled between his legs.

“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten.”

How could Scorpius forget the first time she’d brought out the leather wrap filled with inconspicuous metal rods? At first, he scoffed at the concept, but then intrigue followed at some of the initial sounds. He wasn’t exactly sure how that night ended. Perhaps that’s what Natalia was referring to.

Natalia setting up was in itself appealing. She rolled out the wrap to reveal the rods organized from thin to pencil-thick, each with a slight curve at the end. Her fingers danced over them lightly attempting to select the proper size from the start. She turned her eyes on Scorpius’s half-aroused cock as if making an estimate. His erection stiffened marginally, temporarily bypassing his vice-like mentality. Her lips curled like a bow.

“Hmmm, control yourself, Scorpius.” Natalia snapped the cuffs on a pair of shiny black gloves. Using an antibacterial sheet, she cleansed the gloves and the tip of his cock. Finally, she pumped lube into the palm of her hand and transferred it to his erection with efficient, coating pulses.

Scorpius tore his eyes away from Natalia and focused on the most distasteful thing he could, the blistering heat a Scarran emits to torture the truth out of a non-Scarran. His cock softened slightly in Natalia’s hands. Her grip prevented it from slipping back inside his sheath. Then the cold of metal moved into his cock’s cavity. He braced himself as the first sound began to sink down his urethra. 

The rods moved under the force of gravity, which was both a relief because this would be horrific if done forcefully but also agonizing for the torturous wait. He watched the metal’s bend pass through him as the curved end neatly disappeared inside his abdomen. As soon as the bend disappeared his arousal returned but sharper, the sound was wedged against his prostate and muscle.

Natalia tilted her head considering the finished sound. The only visible component was the flared end of the rod that stopped the sound from sinking too far into his body making it unable to be removed. Between Natalia’s judgemental eyes and the pressure building inside of him already, Scorpius was thickening around the rod again.

“Scorpius,” Natalia murmured, “settle.” She reached and slightly tugged the rod’s protruding end like pulling a thread. This didn’t help Scorpius settle, he shifted his shoulders back tightly and winced. The collar’s spikes jammed into his skin from his tense posture. He pressed back into them more to try to refocus. Pain was an excellent tool for regaining personal control. His erection softened again. Natalia carefully slid the first sound out. Scorpius grit his teeth as it passed through his electrified length.

Her fingers danced to the next size, she lubricated the rod quickly and seated its tip into Scorpius’s cock. The wait as it bottomed out was slightly more excruciating, and when it finished its journey among the web of nerves in his groin, Scorpius spread his legs a little wider. This time, Natalia stroked his cock, which tightened around the rod. A grimace tugged at the corner of his mouth, but his legs spread wider.

“Hmm.” Natalia considered his erection again crowned neatly with the chromed end of the rod. “You can go bigger.”

Scorpius pressed his neck against the collar’s spikes, but unfortunately, the pain was almost as arousing as the rod wedged into his muscle. He closed his eyes and tried to think about heat, about how close he could get to a star without his skin peeling off. Natalia gently guided the second sound out. He might have hissed as it caressed his sensitive walls, but he was too busy thinking about solar flares. When he opened his eyes, the third rod was already breaching him. He blinked back the settling haze of pleasure from his eyes.

Three more rods greater in size, Scorpius was struggling to keep any kind of posture other than slumped and open. The spikes weren’t much of a deterrent and all the blood had left his propped hands. Natalia was playing with the rod lodged in his latest erection. She’d tug it or twist it with minuscule force but the movements still sent electrified bolts into Scorpius’s core. On a few desperately scarce occasions, she’d grip his girth and pump him once. He’d groan open-mouthed, his control in shambles for a microt. His body clenched as if preparing to cum but the metal prevented the necessary contraction to ejaculate. 

She played with him with nothing but teasing hands and scientific eyes. When he began to drool, she tsked him sharply and pinched his nipple. He threw his head back and moaned, the chains clanked tight. Natalia returned to stroking his twitching length. By now, Scorpius’s brain was a mess of nerve signals. He couldn’t cum. The rest of his body was succumbing to the same high sensitivity and numbing incapability to finish as his stoppered dick. With what little leverage he could gain, he writhed against Natalia’s hand. 

“If you want it out, you need to settle down,” she pulled the rod to prove that as long as he had an erection the sound wasn’t budging. Scorpius whimpered dimly. His body was shuddering in waves of unspent arousal. He fumbled through his messy mind for a single thought that would slacken his member long enough to get the rod out. Through the discombobulated murk, he snatched out a mental hand and grabbed his mother. This wasn’t what he wanted, because as soon as he thought about his mother, he thought about his mother’s rape.

Natalia was oblivious to his mental pitfall and began to remove the sound from his diminished erection. Like removing a cork from a champagne bottle, once the sound was beyond the muscle that powered Scorpius’s ejaculation, his abdomen clenched and he came with a gasp. He sank against his restraints unable to focus on anything in particular. Natalia, though, was very beautiful. Yes, he could focus on Natalia. She was rubbing his cheek. Then she was undoing the locks on his braces, and the blood was coming back to his hands.

“Scorpius, you were crying.”

* * *

Natalia was strong, but Scorpius was heavy. After some combined effort, Natalia piled him onto her bed. He dozed a bit against her chest, but when he later awoke groggily, she was gone. The tinkle of metal on metal emanated from the floor. Scorpius rolled over.

Natalia sat on the ground, cross-legged and naked, cleaning her gun. It was a small black thing that she stripped to parts daily before oiling each component and reassembling. The weapon didn’t particularly concern Scorpius, but being that it was from Earth, it interested him. Being that it was Natalia’s interested him even more.

“Blasters have superior ammunition counts, distance, and penetration,” Scorpius had made this argument a few times.

“I don’t want a blaster. What I want is my old Jericho. We’ve talked about this.”

Scorpius watched her slot the barrel back in. He cursed himself for dozing off since she was a vision in the light checking the alignment of the barrel. “Explain it to me again,” he murmured.

“You have an impeccable memory, I’m sure you remember.”

But while the silence stretched only interrupted by the clink of mechanisms fitting into mechanisms, she finally sighed.

“It’s not about what is a better gun. I brought this Makarov from Earth. It holds eight 9mm rounds, made of lead, steel, and gunpowder. Tangible materials I can hold. I can count. I can lose. I trust that more than six hundred give-or-take.”

“Six hundred pulse shots can take out six hundred people or give you six hundred chances against someone who likely has the same.”

A new expression prickled her face, a kind of disgust, but it lasted for a microt before her smile slid into place. “Thankfully, if I ever need this gun, Scorpius, chances are that it won’t be because of six hundred people.”

Scorpius wanted very much to understand why she needed a gun, but that was also a rote response from Natalia. She too had a good memory. She could reiterate any answer she gave down to the intonation of her voice. Even fewer times, he’d catch her in a lie. Her body heat would change in a way that only he could perceive. He hated seeing her lie to him more than any other person he came into contact with. It unnerved him.

The truth was he _liked_ Natalia, which wasn’t a consideration he often recognized, but when he did, there was likely a betrayal coming. Each little lie he witnessed, reminded him that eventually there would be a big one, and while he was always adequately steeled in the past, perhaps this one time… it would hurt.

Previously, when he asked why she had a gun, she’d respond:

“For protection.”

But if he asked again, ‘protection from what?’

“A man.”

And if he had enough of her simple responses and demanded ‘why?’ She would say:

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

However he’d always frown deeper at this, so she’d spread her trickle-sweet smile and laugh. “It's not important. I’m being silly. I’ll never need it. If it makes me feel safe, that should be all that matters. Don’t worry about it.” 

Scorpius didn’t ask any of these questions while lounging in Natalia’s bed watching her click the last piece into her handgun. With the gun finished, she placed it back in her bedside drawer and joined him under the covers.

“It bothers you,” she settled her face next to his.

“Hardly.”

“Uh-huh,” she kissed him softly and switched off the light. “Goodnight then.”

Darkness fell over the room except for the cool light from the window. ‘Bothered’ wasn’t the right word. Scorpius was concerned about the implications of her denying him answers. It was a trait his past sexual conquests shared with Natalia. However, exhaustion had settled into his bones after their session, so sleep came fast.

Natalia gasped awake arns later. Scorpius was always a light sleeper, wearing less of his suit only made him more sensitive to changes throughout the night. When she had recovered her panicked breathing, which took microts, she slipped out of bed quietly and left her bed-chamber.

Scorpius had nightmares too, although they were sporadic now. He hadn’t experienced one while sharing Natalia’s bed, but that was a relatively new occurrence. At first, he watched the crack of light through the door and waited for her return, when she didn’t, he went to find her. 

She was on the balcony, and by the small squadron of stubbed cigarettes on the railing, she was chain-smoking. Despite her quick departure from her room, she had time to throw on a silk robe. However, Scorpius imagined that wasn’t enough material to protect her from the brisk wind. Statu Grandu hung red in the sky like a canopy. She jerked when he joined her at her side.

“I hoped I didn’t wake you,” her voice cracked. By the rasp in her voice and the tracks on her cheeks, she had been crying.

“I’ve heard talking about one’s nightmares helps.”

“Does it help you?” She flicked off ash with a stiff upright arm. There was a miserable firmness to the gesture.

Scorpius glanced down to think about his answer. He didn’t tell anyone his nightmares either. 

“You keep secrets. Let me keep mine,” Natalia whispered to the dark sky, “please.” 

Her black eyes slid to his blue, for a microt they were incredibly pained. Then the spell was broken, she stubbed out her cigarette and headed back inside.

“Sleep in your own bed tonight,” she snapped back as her body disappeared into the interior shadows, leaving Scorpius alone outside.


	6. Art of Heartbreak: Part 2

# Art of Heartbreak

## Part 2

...My suspicions grew daily. What at first felt like domestic bliss began to feel like an elaborate set-dressing for the television reruns Harvey memorized. Her welcoming smiles became masks over some deeper emotion that she wouldn’t allow me to see. At some points I wondered if even her daughter was really hers and not some prop that she strung along to entrap me, to make me docile, poison me with comfort. I’m not sure what her goal was. Perhaps to undermine my work. Apparently she had done similar before.

Scorpius glared at the screen. He took a microt to slide open a desk drawer and pull out a crumpled box of cigarettes. Thankfully he hadn’t developed a full addiction yet, he was a disciplined man. Natalia always smoked more than he did. This was his last pack, leftover from seventy days ago. When he left the apartment, he’d found it still wrapped in plastic among Natalia’s forgotten things. Two cigarettes were left. He smoked one now as his mind sorted through the facts.

...I was not blindly walking into my interactions with Natalia from day one. Even while we still mostly messaged, I sought information on her. I had culled the records of the human colony vessel, Safe Journey, which was quite easy to hack. Days into mine and Natalia's communications, I had individually sorted through all the three hundred and fifty colonists and found Natalia by headshot alone. In her photo, she had a massive, giddy grin but her gold tooth was missing, leaving a gap. Her shaved head obviously wasn’t regulation. She was listed as pregnant on the roster, and in decent health both physically and mentally.

Her name was listed as _Beth Goldberg_. 

At the time, Scorpius didn’t care. He barely knew her and didn’t expect much of their continued conversation. He also had a history of questionable trysts with dangerous women often hiding bad intentions. It hadn’t stopped him before, perhaps the threat of subterfuge made the intercourse even more enjoyable. There was something appealing about foiling these women ultimately too. He always got the best of them, in the end. 

However, Natalia was different. At first, she might have been a recreational romp, but she had integrated herself into his life in a way that was difficult to untangle. She had seen him in ways the previous others would never be privy to.

...At first, I stashed her different name away, in the back of my mind, as evidence I shouldn’t get too emotionally invested in Natalia. In retrospect, I should have considered this anomaly before we began sharing a space, but I had good reason to ignore it. By the time I did ask it might have been too late, but I asked regardless. I thought it would possibly shock the truth out of her.

“You’ve never spoken of this, but your name on Safe Journey was different from Natalia,” Scorpius queried one evening while she prepared the evening meal.

Natalia paused what she was doing and leveled a speculative gaze at him. “Are you keeping a file on me?”

Scorpius snorted noncommittally. "Consider it a validation of my interest in you?"

“Romantic, very romantic,” she continued cutting unperturbed. “Technically, I should never have told you my name was Natalia in the first place. Blame me. Now, if you keep hovering, dinner will be late. Get Andi to set the table.”

In his ship, Scorpius stubbed the spent cigarette out on his armor. He never approached the subject again. This was the first time Natalia had shown her superb ability to keep a straight face. It had been both unnerving and intriguing.

...After the night I found Natalia on the balcony, I decided to enlist a professional to uncover the truth. I needed to know what she was hiding so that I could properly steel myself for her inevitable deceit. The following day I hired a private investigator, shared with him the information I had collected, her two names, her vessel, her patchwork history, and waited. 

A quarter cycle later, Scorpius had checked in with the investigator on a semi-regular basis but the man had yet to uncover anything. During the last twenty days, Scorpius’s requests for an update went unreceived. This irritated Scorpius, who assumed the detective was unable to find a trace of the information he wanted and abandoned the job, perhaps for work that paid him in full, upfront, instead of Scorpius’s half until delivery.

On the fateful conclusion of Natalia’s lies, Scorpius returned back to the apartment only to find it devoid of life. He stepped out of the elevator, expecting to find Natalia floating about the space, exercising and waiting for Andi’s return from school. Instead, she wasn’t there. At first, this didn’t concern him. It was common for her to run errands, so he patiently read reports and sent messages until swept up in work, he realized he had lost track of time. It was late into the evening and still no Natalia or Andi.

Scorpius checked for missed messages in his console records and found none. Then he scoured the rooms, and on closer inspection, several items were missing from Andi’s room, but the only one missing from Natalia’s was her gun. In its place was a slip of paper with Прости written in precise letters. ‘Sorry’. This final discovery was what undid Scorpius’s calm. He flew to the security console, typed in his code, and watched the recorded feed from the day.

In the video, Natalia started her morning like any other. She completed her routine and logged into her console. There must’ve been a message waiting for her because she read through it quickly. By the time her eyes had completed their roving over the screen, she was standing. In moments, she alerted Andi, collected her things, wrote the apology, and wiped her records. Then she was out the door, and the rest of the video was the empty apartment. Scorpius ran a recovery program immediately but what he recovered was indecipherable.

Scorpius snarled at the security feed. The scrambled note was obviously vital in explaining why Natalia left, perhaps permanently, and yet he was denied even that scrap of information. She had abandoned him with nothing but a worthless apology. In a spitting rage at this point, Scorpius paced in an attempt to cool his temper. Instead, it only stoked the fire. He mentally dragged out every moment Natalia purposefully kept information from him, which given the last cycles of living together were hundreds of little moments, all collected and amassed in his memory. The assembled dark cloud blotted out everything else. 

It was in this mood that he sat down and sent a scathing message to his wayward investigator. Scorpius expected silence but what he got was an immediate reply. Given how space travel and message delays worked, Scorpius’s temper was immediately snuffed out. The man was either planetside or orbiting somewhere in the system.

The message read, “I found someone. He wants to speak with you directly. Please advise.”

Scorpius’s intrigue mixed with the promise for resolution. Still, this too was frustratingly vague. If the detective was able to respond in seconds, then he was close enough for a video call.

When the investigator appeared onscreen, he was jittery and apologetic, but obviously hopeful for final payment. Scorpius cut him off sharply to ask who he had found. The tracker swallowed nervously before speaking with someone off-screen. A new face appeared in the console’s frame. He had golden-brown eyes, long-lashes, and meticulous hair. Scorpius immediately recognized him as human by his suit and tie alone, a style that only existed in John Crichton’s memory and nowhere else in the uncharted territories. 

“Hello.” His smile was a bright, curled thing with white, straight teeth. He had an accent like Natalia’s, except crisper, more cosmopolitan. “I’d rather do this in person.”

Scorpius disliked him immediately. He was mockingly perfect. “Currently the answer is no. Who are you?”

“I am Dimitri Nikolayev, the first. I’m aware of who you are, Scorpius. You’re a reasonable man. I’m sure we can come to an understanding.”

“I’m relieved I don’t have to extend pleasantries then. You’re from Earth. Are you the man pursuing Natalia?” He scowled. This was going to be to the point.

“She’s spoken of me? I’m surprised. Yes, I’m Natalia’s husband. The name you are looking for is Natalia Nikolayev. She isn’t there is she? I’d like to see her.” Dimitri’s sharp face softened and took on a look of concern.

Scorpius schooled his expression to cloak his surprise. “I doubt she’d like to see you.”

Dimitri only looked sadder. “Hmm. Yes. I doubt she would. I’m sure you’re aware, but she’s not well.”

“I assure you she’s perfectly well,” Scorpius might’ve frowned slightly at the assumption she was sick in his company.

This apparently shocked Dimitri, “Is she? Surely you’ve noticed she keeps secrets. She probably wants to kill me! She probably thinks I want to kill her.”

“Do you?” Scorpius’s frown tightened.

“Of course not, I’m her husband. I love Natalia. We have a family together. She abandoned her son on Earth to escape with our second child, a daughter. You’ve met her, haven’t you? I would very much like to. I want to bring Natalia home and get her the help she needs.”

Scorpius had to work very hard to cover his expression. This, Dimitri, wasn’t lying. Instead of letting his mask fall, Scorpius said nothing. The human continued.

“She’s a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, a drug addict. She almost killed our son. She went to prison for it. It hurts me that she’s alone out here in space raising our daughter. I’m concerned for her safety. I have the information you want, from Earth.” He flashed a data chip on the screen. “It explains everything, but I need to see where she lives with my daughter. Is she there now?”

“No.”

“Will she be back soon?”

Scorpius forced a neutral expression on his face. “She comes and goes.”

“Oh, it’s like that hmm? I’m not mad about it. She’s done this before. Run off. Slept around. It’s all part of this delusion she’s built. I’m sorry she’s used you. It’s what she does. She can’t help it.”

Ultimately Scorpius didn’t know what to make of this. While Natalia was often infuriatingly secretive, he had never suspected her mentally unwell. He thought about the memory of her mind experienced in the Neural Net Oppressor, the glacial tide and the live wire. There was nothing noticeable wrong with her then, and Scorpius had been inside some troubled minds.

“I know this is hard to accept,” Dimitri’s voice became soft, “but she needs to be with her own people, her family, her species. She needs help. She’s hurt me in hundreds of ways, but I can’t stop loving her. I’m trying my best. Please.”

“Fine,” Scorpius relented. Only because Natalia wasn’t there. “You will have sixty microts to drop off the data and get out.”

Dimitri smiled at him again broadly. His eyes sparkled. “I know a logical man when I see one. Thank you. See you shortly.”

Natalia’s husband in person was as put-together as he appeared on screen. He graced in through the elevator doors with a wool coat hanging off his sharkskin shoulders. A hint of spice hovered around him. He smiled when he offered Scorpius his hand, but Scorpius scowled at the offer and didn’t take it. Dimitri pulled it back with a shrug and flicked the data chip on the floor before he walked a circuit through the apartment. Scorpius timed him.

When the microts were up, Scorpius found the man lingering in Andi’s bedroom. Despite Andi taking her most treasured items with her, the space was still obviously a child’s. Natalia had decorated the ceiling with a tangle of lights and shelving for a host of remaining toys. 

“You know where they are, don’t you?” Dimitri held a smaller stuffed creature in his hands and was twiddling it’s whiskers, dejectedly. 

“I don’t. Times up. Get out.”

Dimitri sighed heavily, placed the toy back on the shelf, and pressed it in gently.

“If she comes back, will you message me?”

“No.”

At this Dimitri’s face tightened. 

“She’s got you really good man. You better be careful. Read the files. Make your own decision, but listen to someone that knows, she’s done this before. She’s done this to me. Wait until her insanity gets involved in your work. She’ll attempt to ruin everything you’ve accomplished.”

“Get out,” Scorpius was done. The evidence on the data chip called to him. He had to clear his head.

Dimitri raised his hands in surrender, “I’m going.” 

Scorpius could hear the elevator doors ding closed and the only thing left of Dimitri’s presence was the human’s cologne. With him gone and the apartment quiet, he collected the chip off the ground and slotted it into the nearest viewing console.

The data wasn’t exhaustive. Scorpius immediately hissed under his breath that he offered the man access to his home for a selection of documents. The first was a police report. Her mugshot was unrecognizable. Her oval face was skeletal and tight. There was nothing behind her frosted eyes. She wasn’t mentally present. The crime listed was attempted murder and drug possession. In the record was the therapist's notes. Much of the report was redacted in black strips. A second therapist’s diagnosis stated Natalia was a paranoid schizophrenic that made obsessive, unsubstantiated claims against her husband. In trial, she pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of her son and was sentenced to twenty years. She was released after two.

The next document was in absolute contrast. Dated about five cycles before her incarceration, was a birth announcement for the same child, also named Dimitri. It featured a professionally shot photograph in black and white of her new family. She was teaming with love, her smile larger and more genuine than any Scorpius had seen from her. She held her son toward the camera, already with dark curls and eyelashes. Dimitri held her close with one hand on her hip, and one hand over the baby’s small body. He only had eyes for her. His smile was filled with tender affection.

Dimitri had included more documents, but everything paled in comparison between the two photographs taken five years apart. Scorpius was caught comparing the different women that made up Natalia’s psyche. Each one seemed impossibly dissimilar to the other. The young Natalia with her son in her lap was the closest to the Natalia he knew, but… the puzzle pieces weren’t fitting. Without Natalia’s reaction to this new information, he couldn’t uncover the truth with his intellect alone. This was likely the first night he couldn’t sleep. His brain kept catching on the sharp edges in this incomplete image of the woman he _once liked._

Nights after Dimitri left, Scorpius was still unable to sleep, thus beginning the long chain of nights like this. He lounged drearily in his conversation pit with a warm drink. It helped him when he had a host of recurring nightmares in his twenties but it wasn’t working to cure his churning, uncertain mind. When a clink on the glass balcony jostled him alert, he spotted Natalia outside, tapping on the door with a knuckle. 

“Natalia!” He almost threw the door off its track with his surprise and scarran strength. Her appearance was so unexpected he couldn’t reel in his pointed glare. “Didn’t get everything the first time?”

“No, I...I shouldn’t have left like that. I…panicked. Can I come in? I need to speak with you.” Her eyes were sharp with worry. The wind lifted her short hair and whipped it back. She was wearing some kind of rappel harness.

“Please. Be my guest.” He moved out of the way to allow her entrance. She floated in like their situation hadn't changed. Scorpius flattened his voice to a cool, analytical drone, “I need to speak with you too. You see, I learned some very interesting things about you recently, and I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

She turned on him sharply then as if she faltered. Her eyebrow twitched. “I… yes?”

“I met your husband.”

Her face contorted in milli-microts, “He’s a liar! Don’t listen to him!”

Scorpius was pleased he had gained the high ground so quickly, but a sharp pain slipped past his ribs and twisted. “He gave me some illuminating documents about your past.”

Natalia shivered in barely-controlled rage. “He’s a liar.”

“He didn’t seem to be lying. I can sense lies, you know, Natalia. He’s lied less than you have.”

“I’ve never lied to you,” she rasped furiously like a cornered animal.

“Yes, you have. And perhaps more than I could see if you believed your lies yourself.” Scorpius had taken up orbiting her spot on the floor.

She paled then abruptly, “I’m not crazy, Scorpius. I know I’m not. I came back to tell you about my past. I couldn’t just...leave you like…”

“You have others?” Scorpius finished for her.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh...so you think you know everything about me now because of Dimitri’s bullshit?”

“I know nothing about you.” 

“Yes you do! You know me! We live together, Scorpius! We have for two cycles. Does that mean nothing? Dimitri is evil! You’re taking his side over mine? You don’t even know him!”

Scorpius was getting nowhere like this. Her avoidance was cutting into him. He couldn’t get the right words out in a logical order when he was this angry, so he tried a new tactic.

“Did you try to kill your son?”

Her face sank, tears immediately wicked at the edges of her eyes. Natalia’s mouth wobbled. “I don’t remember.”

“How could you not remember something like that? You pleaded guilty.”

“I deserved to be punished,” she blankly stated, “I was messed up.”

“Is that because you are schizophrenic or because you are a drug addict?” Scorpius slithered closer to her. Whatever pain was cutting into his lung was reaching his heart. 

The questioning had spiraled out of his control. He was angry about her lies, about her sudden disappearance. He was upset about Dimitri, his casual emotions, his handsomeness, and even his claim on Natalia as a wife, as a mother to his children. He was mad about his confusion too. The desired outcome for his questions was unknown to him. There was a part of him that craved freedom from this turmoil entirely. It would be so easy to cut her from him like a tumor.

She swallowed back a lump in her throat. Tears were beginning to trail down her cheeks. “I don’t know. Please listen to me. This doesn’t have to be an interrogation.”

“No. I’m through listening to you. I wanted to before but not anymore. I don’t care. You were a pleasant distraction, but I’ve humored your problems beyond your worth.”

Whatever gripping sadness that had fallen over her, left immediately. She hardened to steel, a mercilessly sharp broken knife. Eyes still red-rimmed, she growled at him. 

“I’m glad we’re finally seeing each other then. Now you know, I’m a monster.” Her eyes cut into Scorpius’s like shattered glass, shivering and bright in the light. “And now I know that you’re a monster too.”

She strode back out to the balcony without a microt’s breath and mounted the banister. That was when she looked back toward the apartment with Statu Grandu looming red behind her. Scorpius had followed her to the door either to block her reentry or because he was captured in an unknown spell. Her smile was dead and her eyes were cold. “Goodbye.” 

When he said nothing back, she repelled down into the dark streets below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still with me? Leave a comment
> 
> I'm sure I'll lose some of you in the next act. It's all about Natalia's backstory. I hope I've made her an interesting enough character that you're intrigued to learn what haunts her.
> 
> A good song to prepare is Savage by Eurythmics  
>  _Words of power are killing me  
>  While the sun displays its teeth.  
> All mockery is laughing  
> All violence is cheap.  
> She said...  
> "These are my guns  
> These are my furs  
> This is my living room.  
> You can play with me there sometimes  
> If you catch me in the mood."  
> Savage_


	7. One on One: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters in one month! ma, look, no hands!

# One on One

## Part 1

Scorpius couldn’t remember how many times he’d thought about that final confrontation. Even now, a quarter of a cycle later, the memory still managed to hurt in the same way as it did initially as if time couldn’t dull its razor-sharp edge. Capturing it in the log did nothing to curtail the raw ache like he had hoped. It brought no closure to his confusion. Like everything with Natalia, her departure was unlike any he had experienced before. He had done what any logical man would have, but he couldn’t explain why he was unable to move beyond it.

He watched the indicator blink at the end of the last sentence as if the document hinted there was more to write. Slightly annoyed by his unimproved mood, he closed the log and opened a terminal to the Peacekeeper record bank. While finishing the log, Scorpius hadn’t checked the aurora chair recordings like he normally did. Now with the bank open, at the top of the list was a familiar name. Scorpius’s exhaustion evaporated in the nuclear blast of his surprise.

_Record 829-HY63-01: Natalia Kliger: Human: Female - impersonated a Peacekeeper, suspected sabotage, submitted to interrogation by aurora chair._

Scorpius stood sharply and quickly left his chambers. The corridors of his ship were lit similar to his quarters to reflect the late hour, blue and black like quiet dusk. Thankfully, he encountered no one on his way between his room and the Simulacrum. Any chance encounter would have been treated with rude brevity if earning a response at all. Once inside, the bright white of the empty room shocked Scorpius’s irises. He winced and for a microt, blindly fumbled for the control kiosk with a hand. When his eyesight returned, he pulled up what was on his personal console and began Natalia’s record.

Darkness abruptly settled over the Simulacrum, but in the center of the once white space sat a metal arch and under it a seat with an arrangement of buckles. Scorpius was incredibly familiar with this setup, of the screen lanced in front of the chair’s inhabitant, of the bug-eye pads that hugged their cranium. A Peacekeeper Senior Officer hung off to the side. He wore standard-issue leathers and boots, even wore a commonplace sebacean face. But this was all irrelevant to Scorpius, who hungered to see her. Anger still gripped him even while leaning across the console, rapt for her appearance.

When she stepped into frame, she didn’t disappoint. Scorpius sucked in his breath with a hiss. She had slicked back her dark hair and had stolen a full-body combat suit, which was skin tight and slightly unzipped at the collar. She was much taller than the Officer leading the interrogation which was obvious when she presented her handcuffed hands for him to unlock.

“Hello Officer,” she simpered down at him, “will you be doing the honors?”

The Officer gruffly snorted at her, grabbed her by the crook of her arm, and plopped her in the chair. She patiently waited as if this was completely every day as if she was in a salon awaiting the next available hairdresser even while he belted her tightly in.

“Ms. Kliger, was it?” His eyes flicked down to a tablet, “My name is Senior Officer Benthos. You are being interrogated for information on what you did to this vessel while impersonating a peacekeeper.”

“In Russia, we have a saying. ‘An uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar’. Do you know what that means?" she paused briefly, but obviously wasn't expecting him to reply, "It means a person who just comes to your house without calling first is worse than bloodshed. But I didn’t think you’d accept house calls. So I did the next best thing.” She grinned wolfishly at him.

Benthos wasn’t amused. He frowned tightly in true Peacekeeper fashion. “There is nothing funny about this Ms. Kliger. This machine was made to pillage every memory you’ve ever had, painfully.”

Natalia smirked, “Thus, the bloodshed. You see my point?”

“No. I do not. We will get answers out of you, Kliger. So let us begin.” He gestured to the device controller, a young woman shadowed in the back of the room. The machine hummed on, and Natalia’s body flexed uncomfortably as any creature does while sitting in the _chair._

Her memories began from the start of her life, which was, given the reason for this interrogation, offtopic. Benthos asked her a few pointed questions to get her to focus on the pertinent information, but she winced lightly each time and said ‘nuh-uh-uh, patience...sir.’

Benthos huffed with apparent irritation. The Aurora chair normally made people more compliant, not less. Scorpius, reviewing the recording after the fact, was mildly amused for a microt. Natalia had excellent pain tolerance, and she always enjoyed a good mental lashing. He wondered what a thrill it would be if he were the interrogator and this was his first encounter with Natalia. Would he be equally irritated? It was impossible to say.

The memories fast-forwarded through her childhood chronologically. Scorpius picked a few to slow down.

“Hey jew!” A rock whizzed through the air and slammed into Natalia’s forehead. It hit her so soundly her neck snapped back and her body pitched into the snowdrift lining the road. She drifted in a daze for either seconds or minutes, but when she came to, she had to blink back a trickle of blood. Three smirking men now hung over her. She huddled into her pillowy coat. It was a hand-me-down and was too big, but it made her feel as warm as possible in the Siberian temperature.

“Aw, little Dva Kliger is awake!” The largest of the men chuckled. 

Her nickname everywhere in Norilsk was Dva, _two_ , because she was the second daughter named Natalia in her family. She’d been Dva for as long as she could remember to everyone in the small northern city.

“I’m going to sic my big brother on you, Igor,” Natalia warned even as she made herself as small as possible.

“Which one? The drug addict or the motherfucker?” spat the leader with blonde, greasy hair.

“The one with the gun, Igor! I hope he’s hopped up on something when he comes after you!” Natalia was recovering her senses. Even at eleven, this wasn’t the first encounter she had with this crew, they were out of work and bored. She was easy pickings for an otherwise dull evening.

The men continued to hover but now they laughed like hyenas. She’d read about hyenas.

Then one of their faces became sinister and he shot a hand up under her coat to graze her inner thigh. She jerked and he drew his hand back bloody, howling. While they had gawked, she had drawn her hands up the sleeves towards her chest and pulled out a box cutter she got from school. It was a harmless pinch from an underfunded classroom. She was sure she’d get in trouble later, but first, her prerogative was escaping these men. She took off over the ice towards apartment block twelve.

These idiots were normally slow but now they were drunk. She easily outpaced them. The snowdrifts almost reached the second story. She slammed past the heavy entry door and barreled up the interior stairwell.

Finally, she barged into her family's apartment heaving for breath. 

“Hey Dva, you done with that coat? I need it.” One of her older sisters was made up for a night out. She wore a crop top and heeled boots even in the frigid temperature.

“Yeah…” Natalia rasped and stripped the coat off. The box cutter still sat heavy in her hand. 

“What’s that?” Her sister said with little actual interest.

“Igor and his friends hassled me again.”

“Oh, cute.” 

Natalia shivered, stuck out her tongue.

“Whatever girl, those are the kinds of men we get to pick from. Better learn to like it.” And her sister was out the door.

Natalia, outside her coat, was made of elbows. She was thin and had the swollen mouth look of someone with too many teeth but not enough lip to cover them. Still, her face was pleasantly oval. Her eyes black as coal. A messy braid wrapped her head but a halo of flyaways had escaped. She drifted into the warm hallway and scooped up an infant from the floor. The babe cooed as she hefted it onto her hip.

“Hey ma, has Alexei been fed yet?” She peaked into the kitchen with her brother sucking his fist.

“Dva! Where have you been!? I need your help,” Her mother was exasperated over a steaming pot of what Natalia guessed was borscht. She liked borscht, the white kind, not the red. Her ma made a great white borscht.

“At school ma,” Natalia sighed.

“Why even go? I need you here. Put your brother down and start peeling potatoes.” Potatoes meant the borscht was the white kind. Natalia was thrilled.

She plopped her brother into a messy highchair, swapped her box cutter for a dull peeling knife, and got to work. A small flickering screen sat precariously on the chipped counter top. Natalia switched it to the news. The news was always a comfort for her, it reminded her that there were places where exciting things happened and people that were important, worth talking about. On the screen, the normally drol broadcaster was actually excited for once. His bushy eyebrows climbing higher and higher up his forehead.

“Once again, in an unbelievable and unforgettable moment in history, John Crichton, an American astronaut, has brought real aliens back from the edge of the galaxy! I can’t believe I’m alive to see this day. Truly incredible!”

Natalia sliced into the palm of her hand with the dull knife. She glanced down at it minutely, wrapped it with a rag, and continued to stare dumbfounded at the news.

“Ma! Did you hear that?! Aliens! On Earth!”

“Hmm? Dva! Look at what your brother has gotten into! Can’t you focus on anything?” 

Alexei was splattering potato skins around his tray. Her ma immediately rushed forward to pluck him from the seat and went to clean him up. Micha, Natalia’s eldest brother, crowded her in the doorway. He was a tall, thick man, heavy in the middle with a mop of brown hair and beard.

“Michail! Oh, look at you!” Natalia’s ma kissed both his cheeks lovingly. “How was work? I’ll be right back. Alexei made a mess. Stir the pot if you’d be a dear.”

Micha did not stir the pot, he slumped down at the chair across the table, took a big swig of vodka from his pocket flask, and stared at Natalia.

“Hey shit-for-brains, your forehead is bloody.”

“At least I have brains, fart breath, and thanks for noticing. Can you go beat up Igor and his idiot friends? They threw a rock at me and called me jew.” Her eyes remained plastered to the tv. It was hard to hear what the broadcaster was saying with Micha drunkenly breathing nearby.

“You are a jew. Remember?” Micha leaned forward on the table and wiggled his eyebrows. 

“Yeah.” Being a jew wasn’t that bad if it weren’t for all the assholes forcing her to remember all the time. 

“Hey did you hear about the aliens!?” She really wanted to share this historical moment with someone even if it was her dumb brother.

“Yeah, I did. Crazy right? Not alone in the universe anymore.” The chair skidded on the linoleum as he stood up swaying. “Wait until they come back in their flying saucers and set fire to this entire dumpster heap with a single rocket. Plink!” He flicked his finger in the air. “Boom!”

Natalia’s face fell. “Nooo, they wouldn’t!” 

She glanced mortified from her brother to the flickering television and the jittery clips of the humanoid aliens in Florida. Micha had already staggered away when she glanced back to restate her claim. Alone now, she continued to peel potatoes in the kitchen, eyes glued to the screen, until the pot boiled over, and her mom returned to chastise her. 

Throughout this memory, Scorpius had drifted from the console into the hologram and was equally as interested in the news broadcast as the young Natalia. The memory was fairly complete. The mind remembers more than a sentient creature normally believes is possible. On the small screen, he could make out Chiana and Aeryn in the hectic camera shake. He sauntered back to the console to speed through to the next memory of interest.

In the fast forward of her childhood, Natalia grew quickly. By fourteen, she towered over her friends, and by sixteen, she matured into a young woman. Her younger and older brothers alike started teasing her or commenting on her body provocatively. She began spending time with anyone that would keep her away from the cramped confines of her family’s apartment. Perhaps it was uncommon for a human girl this young to learn that using her body could grant her access to things she desired, but it wasn’t unheard of to Scorpius, who was often mystified by the cultural taboos of Earth.

“Well look who decided to finally show up!” sassed a teenage girl hanging over the rusting railing of a half-sunken barge. It had a host of miserable plants growing from its gutted corpse. The river was languid and bright blue in the summer sun.

Natalia trundled along the worn footpath through the grassland. Music blasted from the headphones around her neck. The hood of her sweatshirt was thrown back, her pink sweatpants were tucked into salvaged military boots. Everything she wore was too big or too short for her. Her loose braid was casually thrown over her shoulder. She was unused to her height. Scorpius saw it in the hunch of her shoulders like she was perpetually cringing downward.

“Too busy giving blow jobs to hang out with your friends, Dva?” The girl on the boat had similar apparel but was more noticeably a child. She had pierced lips. There were two others, quietly observing.

“You’re just jealous, Mischa. Nobody has given you two seconds.” 

“He’s a pedophile, you moron. Why would I want that?” Mischa shot back grumpily.

Natalia tsked, fiddled with the end of her braid.

“He’s okay. He lets me sleep in at least. Doesn’t ask for too much. He dropped me off, you know? I’d be later if I had to walk.”

“Blow jobs. You’re going to end up with a disease if you aren’t careful.”

Natalia scowled sharply. “At least he’s not asking for more. Now are you going to let me on the boat or what? I’m getting eaten alive by midges down here!”

“Come on Misch,” one of the other girls knocked her lightly on the shoulder, “let her up.”

Mischa huffed but moved away from the broken space in the railing. Natalia threw her backpack up over the ledge and clumsily followed. She unzipped her pack to draw out a tall bottle of vodka. She passed it to her friends in exchange for a lit joint.

“Sorry I’m late,” she laughed happily on a coughing exhale, “so what’s new?”

Scorpius fast-forwarded through the conversation until he recognized he needed to backtrack. Within microts the group was chasing after a moving train and scrambling onboard. Something happened that he missed in their evening interaction.

Natalia lay on her back on the rotting platform of the barge. The stars were wild across the night sky. Mischa was to her right, and Natasha and Mira were to her left. Natasha continued to puff on their latest joint, while Mischa clutched the empty bottle of vodka to her chest like it was going to save her life.

“How many aliens do you think are out there? Like, kinds of aliens?” Mischa asked the stars more than her friends.

“Too many to count.” Natasha countered but then coughed aggressively.

“Think we’ll ever get out there?” Mischa whispered quietly.

“You mean humans? Or like us four?” Natalia asked, louder than her friend.

“Like us?”

Natalia scoffed. “Hell no.”

“Why not!?” Mischa rolled over to glare at Natalia.

“Because we’re nobodies from nowhere. We’re stupid, uneducated. We’re women. Trust me, none of us are getting off this rock.” Despite her statement, Natalia stared up into the sky, bright eyes filled with wonder.

“You’re so jaded, Dva,” Mischa mumbled bitterly.

“I’m not. I’m a realist. You want adventure? How about starting small, like getting to Moscow?”

Mischa tsched her and rolled back down.

“I’m serious. We can go tonight. Hitch-hiking to the nearest train would be the hardest part. The train into Moscow is only a few days once we’re on board.”

Her other friends rolled over to stare at her. This idea obviously held a lot of appeal to the group.

“Seriously. How about midnight? I can get my guy to get us a good head start.” She grinned like a shark.

“I dunno, Dva.” Mira picked a cuticle nervously.

“No no no. None of that. We’re all in this together. Here, we have to make an oath. Let’s spit in each other’s mouths.”

Mischa grimaced. “Who does that Dva? Nobody. No one asks their friends to spit in each other’s mouths.”

“Shhh. I’m the leader and what I say, goes.” Her eyes narrowed on Mischa, “Here, open your mouth. You first.”

Scorpius snorted as the four girls hawked spit at each other in Natalia’s bizarre ritual. It was obviously a hint at her future proclivities. Despite her fear, Natalia was elated. The four of them were going on a big adventure.

The men, who drove them to Novy Urengoy, a small slightly-western city, were no one special. Most were simply excited to entertain four young women. Some were rewarded if they were cute or young or promised to take them much further than they were originally driving. The sunset over the trees while Natalia gave another handjob. The windows rolled down to let out smoke from shared cigarettes. She was only sixteen, but already she was numbing to the world. This sudden peek at freedom was enough to give her a rejuvenating hope.

Once they found the train tracks to Moscow, Mira abandoned the trip. She’d been this far before but going further was mentally insurmountable. She was having nightmares of jumping the train and falling under the wheels. Somehow going back alone was less frightening.

Natalia flew into the train practically cackling. She grabbed her remaining friends in turn and hauled them up onto the coal cart. Her clothes were in tatters, but she rode the train like Mikhail Kutuzov leading his troops against Napoleon. In three days, they’d be in Moscow, and a new, different chapter of their lives would begin.

The scenery whipped past Scorpius as he stood in the open air, watching the three girls curl up in a coal bucket for the last night of their journey. He looked back at the older Natalia, latched down in the chair. She was looking fondly at this memory. He had to watch more. The memories charged on like a train riding bullishly on its tracks.


	8. One on One: Part 2

# One on One

##  Part 2

Moscow was wild. It was its own wilderness with its subways, its streets, its bounty of people. Natalia, beyond exuberant, wanted to say hello to everyone. However, she and her friends had no more money. What they had was lost along the trip to booze, cigarettes, weed, and food. They had no place to stay, so they slept in a public park huddled together, scared out of their wits. The thrill of getting there wasn’t the same as the hardship of staying there. For several weeks they lived on the street, stealing food and whatever money they could get, but none of them were skilled thieves, and the terror of being caught plagued them.

After a few weeks of this, Mischa left. She had snuck a phone call home late one night and convinced her parents to buy her a flight. When the time came and Mischa couldn’t keep the secret any longer, Natalia was inconsolable. She hugged herself to her friend’s middle, and while kneeling in the middle of a public plaza, sobbed.

“Why, you bitch! We were supposed to do this together! You can’t leave!” Natalia blubbered angrily into her friend’s stomach.

Mischa patted the top of her friend’s head with a pouring affection, her fingers caught in the grimy braids. “Dva, you’re crazy. I love you, but you’re crazy. What did you think was going to happen? We’re broke. We’re young. We know no one here!”

“You can’t leave. What am I supposed to do?”

Natasha was glowering off to the side, equally miserable, but not expressing it as noticeably. 

“I dunno, Dva. Go home. I’ll be there.” She continued to pet and eventually began unbraiding, her friend’s hair. It fell around Natalia’s tear-soaked face in greasy clumps. “Bring Natasha. But I got to go. That’s my ride.”

Mischa pried Natalia’s gripping hands from her waist and abandoned her friend in the street for a black car’s interior. Natalia pressed her fists to her eyes and cried until her face was puffy and her sobs were less wet than choking.

“Come on, Dva,” Natasha rubbed her boney back. “We can’t stay here forever.”

Their nights went on. Scorpius kept skipping through their monotonous, frightening days. Eventually, it was kindness that got them a spot on a couch in someone’s flat. A grocer couldn’t stand passing by the two forlorn girls every morning, as they slept in an alley, huddled together under wet cardboard.

Natasha and Natalia had never been close, and now they shared a tiny fold-out in a cramped apartment. They each had their own schemes. Natalia would slink out at night when Natasha was asleep, and slip under the covers just as Natasha woke up. With access to a shower, a brief stint of shoplifting, and a stolen ID from her older sister, Natalia had formulated a plan. She walked into the highest-rated gentlemen's club she could find online, wobbly-kneed in a pair of blistering heels, and asked for a server job.

She might have been as made-up as a whoring babushka, but the manager took one long, pointed look at her tall body and young face before hiring her. She practically skipped to the nearest corner store, bought the most expensive champagne she could, and bounced back to the grocer’s apartment to celebrate with Natasha, who sadly was nowhere to be found. She drank the bottle herself on the ledge of the window, regardless of its poor view of a cement wall.

Waitressing was harder than Natalia at first realized. She was clumsy in heels, and the men she served were grabby. Many drinks were spilled in the first few weeks of work, but thankfully the bartender took pity on her and spent some time after-hours teaching her some basics. Her name was Vasalisa. Even though she was the bartender of a strip club, she was fairly buttoned-up. She had blood red hair she kept pinned in a chignon and always tied a silk bow of the same color under her lace collar.

Natalia would practice walking and spinning in her towering heels, while Vasalisa drank straight gin and offered her pointers. The dancers lounged around counting their rubles into thick stacks, chatting loudly about the best patrons, and gossiping nastily about women who were absent. Natalia ogled the piles of money with feverish eyes. It wasn't hard for a perceptive woman like Vasalisa to notice the girl's hungry gaze. She’d often speak quietly with a dancer named Mara, and they’d cast furtive glances at Natalia.

Mara was a short, fierce woman with dirty blond hair, cropped short, tiny gold piercings, and bright colorful tattoos. She was a fantastic dancer that was capable of scaling poles like they were nothing and slipping down them like condensation on a chilled glass. When she wasn’t on stage, Natalia would often find her leaning topless over the bar, flirting with Vasa. 

Scorpius slowed down many of these interactions. He gained little listening to these women converse, but they were attractive, which was enough reason. He also enjoyed Natalia’s slightly strict education under their tutelage. When Vasa had nothing more to teach her about serving, Mara began picking up the slack by teaching her dancing. Natalia was a quick study. She obviously enjoyed using her body, which she carried into her time as a boxer later in life.

Natalia graced over to the bar one evening in a playboy bunny suit, complete with a bushy white tail and one black ear folded down. Harvey often wasted time reading dog-eared Playboy magazines when Scorpius was elsewhere. The outfits were uncannily similar between printed fold-out and reality. Vasa reached over the bar to adjust the black bow tied around her neck.

“Hey Zhirafa,” Mara’s nickname for her was 'giraffe', “Vasa and I were talking. It’s a quiet night. The manager is out back with one of the new girls.” She smiled sinfully. “He won’t be around any time soon. You want to take a spin on stage?” Mara propped her cheek in her hand while she assessed Natalia.

“Do you think I’m ready?” Natalia collected a few drinks from the server station onto her tray but she focused hopefully on Mara.

“No one is ever ready for their first time,” Vasa set three shot glasses on the runner, “but you are more than capable of a good show. Here, for the nerves.” She poured out tequila. They wove their arms together and took the shots, grit their teeth against the sour pinch in their cheeks.

“Okay!” Natalia smiled brightly, “let me drop this off at table three, and I’ll give it a go.”

The Simulacrum darkened slightly. Red and purple lights turned up the stage, and Scorpius had a strange urge to sit in one of the leather chairs at an empty cocktail table. It was a ridiculous idea, this was a recording of a memory projected as a hologram. He couldn’t touch anything, let alone sit. Still in the dark, he watched Natalia begin her first set as a stripper.

She had swapped her one-piece bunny suit for a green bikini and clear heels. When the lights fell on her, she started slowly like she was remembering how to move and showing her discovery to the onlookers. As she warmed to the attention and received a few preemptive rubles snapped into her thong, she spun on the pole and wrapped her thighs tightly around it to scale it. At its tallest point, she leaned back tantalizingly and untied her hair.

Natalia spiraled down gracefully, pushed back her hair, and smiled. Scorpius, in the Simulacrum, swallowed, suddenly parched. Her dance continued without pause. She gyrated her hips, slapped her ass, and threw a few blisteringly coy glances to the crowd. With her outfit, there was little to take off, but she did manage to make the two scraps of clothing last. As her performance song played its last few notes, she kicked her panties to the crowd. 

While still nude, she kneeled liquidly to the stage and scrounged for every thrown bill. With her fists full, she flashed a blinding smile at the few that were lecherously watching her in the dark and bounced offstage. Mara was waiting for her.

“Aaaaaa!” Natalia threw her arms around the much smaller woman and bounced excitedly from foot to foot, “Ah! Mara! I did it!”

Mara, with her face smothered in Natalia’s bare chest, poked her mouth out enough to breathe and speak, “Of course you did, babe. You were incredible. I couldn’t be prouder.” 

“Let me buy you a drink!” Natalia curled away from her a bit shyer than when she fell against her. She covered her chest with an arm demurely. “Oh, but maybe I should get dressed first.”

“Put the bunny suit back on. I like it,” Mara purred and casually touched the curve of her hip with the back of a hand.

Natalia flushed pink. “Okay, Mara. Give me a second.”

At the bar, Mara and Vasa were whispering. As Natalia walked towards them she was electrifyingly nervous. Mara licked her lips. “When we’re done here you want to come back to our place? We can get you fed.”

Vasa giggled at Mara’s boldness. “We also have a nice bottle of red that we could open, if that interests you.”

Natalia only blushed brighter, but she nodded shyly. “Okay. I’d like that.”

Mara made eggplant parmesan, a very cosmopolitan dish for Natalia who had never eaten anything remotely Italian, and Vasa kept the wine pouring. Early into the morning the three of them crammed onto the couch to watch a movie, but as the credits rolled there was a quiet that could only be a mutual consideration for what was going to happen next. In the end, it was Vasalisa, who took Natalia’s empty wine glass, placed it with a ‘clack’ onto the side table, and kissed her. Natalia’s cheeks pricked sharply with heat either from wine or relief.

She attempted to keep pace with Vasa’s warm, rolling mouth and stroking tongue. It was softly meditative, and Natalia shut her eyes to breathe into it. Her body was languidly paralyzed with her hand frozen on Vasa’s thigh. When the other woman paused, Natalia frostily opened her eyes, sighed heavily, and then Mara rolled her face toward her. Mara’s kiss was a bit sharper. She used more tongue, but it made Natalia hungry. She remembered she had arms that could grab and hold. Natalia dragged Mara close to her, stroked her back, held her cheeks.

“What should I do?” Natalia whispered while nipping at her teeth. “Please.”

Mara snickered into her welcoming mouth, “Nothing, babe, relax. We’re hosting you, remember?”

Vasa unpinned her hair, and it fell in thick waves of red over her shoulders. Natalia was enraptured by it immediately like it was a wild creature in the corner of her eye. Mara broke the kiss to pull the ribbon from Vasa’s collar and expose her shirt buttons. When Vasa took over to undress, Natalia helplessly watched the efficient stripping of the only woman in the room she hadn’t seen naked. While Natalia was hypnotized with interest, Mara’s hand slid up Natalia’s parting thighs. This sudden touch snapped her attention over to Mara.

“Is this okay?” Mara’s fingers caressed the seam of her panties.

Natalia sucked her own lip and nodded. Mara’s fingers moved further into the ridges of her body to finger her. Natalia whimpered but when she opened her pleasure-stricken eyes, Vasa was topless and moving toward her for another kiss. Vasa took Natalia’s forgotten hands and brought them to her breasts. Before this moment, Natalia thought she was experienced, but she’d never been overwhelmed before nor had she ever been attended to first. It was a beautiful helplessness.

Eventually, Mara slid to the ground, nudged apart Natalia’s legs, and dragged her soaked thong over her knees. Natalia shuffled forward with little thought, too invested in Vasa’s mouth and breasts to be fully aware of what was coming next. Mara did ask, however, and Natalia breathlessly said ‘yes, fuck, please.’

Mara smirked against her and despite Natalia’s distraction, she felt the other woman curl her lips blissfully before the pressure of an expert tongue skimmed between her folds. Natalia whimpered again, her brow curved down in concentration. Vasa moved lower to suck a bruise into her neck and brought her hand under the edges of Natalia’s top to touch her aching-for-contact nipples. Natalia groaned while bucking lightly into Mara’s mouth. Mara licked into her before dragging up to circle her clit. The loss of her tongue in Natalia’s cavity was replaced by two digits, pulsing in and out.

Natalia rocked dimly against them, threw her head over the couch’s back, and moaned. Mara continued her ministrations to the bead of nerves cresting her sex. Natalia wiggled against her as her breath quickened. She arched her back when pleasure surged through her in a warm fizzling explosion. 

Afterward, wrapped in both Mara and Vasa’s embrace, Natalia realized what she had just experienced was an orgasm, and all the sex she had experienced before was nothing but a weak approximation of pleasure. She giggled to herself while glancing from Mara to Vasa, because wow, the gangly girl who left Norilsk just months ago would never have expected to end up here.

Natalia began living with them after that. They had a guest bedroom that became hers. It was the first time she’d ever had a room to herself. She would have preferred sharing a bed with the pair, but a queen simply couldn't accommodate three people, especially when one of them was Natalia’s height. She decorated her new home with simple things she found in city shops and flea markets together with struggling plants she would overwater.

She cooked and cleaned and joined them sexually when they invited her in. This was perhaps the first time Natalia considered herself in a relationship with anyone. She was living with them after all, and they considered her part of their relationship as well. Natalia was finally taken care of, which was something she always desperately wanted, but however wonderful their unconventional affair felt, she often had the nagging feeling of trespassing on something that could never fully be hers. It made her woefully sad sometimes and sickly jealous at others.

To distract herself from the emotional turmoil, Natalia went back to school. She hadn’t completed her basic general education, and she realized she wanted to at least finish secondary. Perhaps she could become a doctor like her grandfather before being banished to the gulag. The idea that someday she might be able to help people, or better yet, heal people, was an idea she lingered on often.

Mara and Vasa were like the family she always dreamt of having. It wasn’t perfect, but it was more than she had ever had. People were supporting her, keeping an eye on her growth and improvement, and completely unlike family, fucking her senselessly. In the aurora chair’s screen, Natalia shivered against Vasa’s fingers while Mara moved against her thigh.

The Natalia of the present, trapped in the aurora chair, was shaking with perspiration and exhaustion. Still, she smiled coyly at Benthos. “I see you are a professional.”

Benthos was staring wide-eyed at the screen. When he realized Natalia had spoken to him, he coughed into his closed fist and looked away.

“I think that’s all for today. If you insist on going through your entire life for a simple question, then so be it.” The Peacekeeper had the hint of a blush painted over his throat.

He gestured to the controller and the machine’s hum spun down. When he released her from the chair, she clattered down heavily, stumbling before righting herself. Benthos clicked her wrists back together with handcuffs before she was escorted from the interrogation room.

The recording clicked off, and the darkness that had descended over the room brightened to the default blinding light. Scorpius remained the sole black spot in the pristine Simulacrum. He rubbed his chin with his index-finger, lost in thought. A part of him had wanted a full recording now, but instead, he was going to receive segments. The manner in which he received the data was unsubstantial. Before the end of today, as it was nearly morning arns, he would retrieve another section to ponder over.

He was still incredibly angry at Natalia. His suspicions were raging considering she’d just broken into a Peacekeeper command carrier. To do what exactly was still unknown. He continued to scratch his chin, but this time when he looked up, he was back in his quarters. He was too lost in thought to notice he’d left the Simulacrum. His cot looked very inviting, so he splayed out over it.

Benthos had ended the session on such an enticing image. If Scorpius shut his eyes he could still see Natalia’s face at the heights of ecstasy with the two other women.

He thought about her stagger exiting the chair. How she had clung for a moment to Benthos to regain her composure. It reminded him of her weak-legged wobble when she had experienced sexual release. In the chair she was likely aroused, reliving those moments in her female triad, or even before, due to the simple act of being under someone else’s control and submitted to mental torment. 

If he had been given the chance to prepare before their last encounter, he could have offered her the aurora chair as a compromise. She could have given him everything he asked for and he could have kneeled before her and lapped her up. But that wasn’t entirely correct, she was still a lying, traitorous bitch, and he was positive by the end of the current recordings, he’d have his proof.

Without much-considered thought, Scorpius had begun touching himself. His gloved hand had slyly unbuckled his codpiece while he was distracted and teased a full erection out of his sheath. Realizing this now, he settled into it. It was common that when someone left a relationship they took pleasure from another to help them forget. Scorpius hadn’t done that. Instead, he’d stubbornly thrown himself into work and vexation. In fact, he’d barely paid any attention to his appetites at all, which went from sated regularly, almost gluttonously, to completely famished.

Eighty solar days had passed since the night he last saw Natalia, and he was absolutely, physically starving. Within microts of stroking himself rigid that fact was apparent. To think, Natalia was, at any point, such a provocative dancer. A memory of Harvey’s drifted to his mind. There was a strip club in Crichton’s memories that his clone frequented. The pole dancers were incredible women, full of life, sex appeal, and power. They did amazing things with simple muscle groups.

Imaging Natalia in her alluring bunny suit gyrating her hips above him now sent a surge of raging pleasure down his spine right into the base of his cock. If instead of the boxing bar, he’d met Natalia in a strip club, would their relationship have happened? Would he have been interested in conversing with her? Doubtful, he couldn’t deny that he’d feel preyed upon if those were the initial dynamics of their interaction.

Scorpius licked the column of her throat, over the black ribbon tied with a small bow, and encircled her neck with both hands. He could squeeze the life out of her, lace the black silk between his fingers and pull, but that was unthinkable, instead, he would bring her to the edge simply for her small gasping sounds. With her alive, he could bring her to that breaking point multiple times, and that was far too valuable to extinguish hastily, if ever. Her taunt shivers in his grip ground down on his erection. 

If he rucked down the fabric over her breasts, he could squeeze them instead, tease her nipples from satin to beaded. He could leave a pretty bruise on the swell of one or the other, or perhaps both, with his mouth. An edge of aroused panic lanced through him suddenly. He wheezed into her sternum, sheltered in her softness, and came in his hand.

A low growl emitted from the back of his throat as his molars ground.

However, he wasn’t granted a reprieve from his hunger. Between lidded eyes, he could almost make out Natalia’s face, smiling down at him with a warmness he could never emulate, but he would sometimes try. He tried now for the figment hanging over him even as his quarters brightened to welcome the morning arns. She dissipated in the light.


	9. One on One: Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank the 10 people that regularly read this. You warm my heart. This story is somehow my baby, and I hope you keep with it until the end.

# One on One

## Part 3

When Natalia and he separated all those nights ago, Scorpius stopped using the apartment. Why stay there when Darvek, the union president, was already ushered into the folds of the uncharted territories’ unification? Scorpius’s work with the planet system was complete, the trading union was part of the unification effort, so a lesser dignitary easily took over to oversee the continued guidance. 

Scorpius had made a show of the transition, and Darvek stayed quiet throughout the transition meeting. Darvek propped his chin in his hand on the conference table while blandly observing the formalities. When the presentation was complete, he idly glanced at Scorpius and with an offensive casualness said, “She broke up with you didn’t she?”

Ultimately, Scorpius was relieved to be done with the union president, and there was plenty of other work to be completed. At least Scorpius had proven his ability to get even the most obstinate of aliens signed onto the project. He was now able to pick strategic individuals, travel to their locations, and convince them. Currently, his personal yachting vessel was in orbit around the Royal Planet of the Breakaway Colonies. Scorpius hadn’t returned to this planet since his involvement with John Crichton’s marriage to Princess Katralla. The princess was still frozen along with Crichton’s replacement and would be for another fifty-five cycles. 

While Scorpius’s history with Empress Novia was less than ideal, she was a shrewd woman, perhaps unification would interest her. The simple fact that he was granted permission to orbit was a good sign. However, it was unfortunate that the night he spent watching Natalia’s recordings was followed by the day he met with her. The meeting went as well as expected, which was poorly. Five microts into the meeting, Empress Novia stood up, reminded Scorpius that the Breakaway Colonies were just that, breakaway, and were therefore opposed to unification. Scorpius’s lethargy didn’t help matters either.

Despite that abysmal failure, she hadn’t retracted his allowance to orbit, so back in his chambers again, he glared icily at the planet below. He had a strong impulse to nap but failed at that too when he was unable to settle his restless mind. He was spared from lingering longer on his cot when a notification dinged from his console. Natalia’s next record was available for viewing.

_Record 829-HY63-02: Natalia Kliger: Human: Female - impersonated a Peacekeeper, suspected sabotage, submitted to interrogation by aurora chair. Resistant to torture._

Scorpius didn't waste a microt and cut a path to the Simulacrum. Outside the door, his startled aide fumbled his tablet out of his hands but caught it before it hit the hard floor.

“Sir! Apologies for interrupting, do you have a moment to—.”

“I am currently occupied. Send your concerns to my console, I’ll get to them when I am available.” Scorpius side-stepped the man and left him standing dumbfounded in the corridor.

The Simulacrum was currently empty, which given early evening hours and the crew’s penchant to use it for simulation games, was a small win for Scorpius, who would have unceremoniously rousted the occupiers without a microt’s thought. He established the connection, and the Simulacrum dimmed to the darkness of the aurora chair’s chamber.

Natalia appeared much the same way she did the previous recording, same hair, same outfit. Her posture carried no fear of the machine or the arns of mental anguish that awaited her. As common practice, Senior Officer Benthos was back to guide the interrogation.

“I expect your cooperation today, Ms. Kliger. Don’t disappoint me.” His voice brimmed with dissatisfaction.

“Or you’ll what? Torture me? I’m afraid you’ve tapped out of your ability to threaten me.” Natalia stepped up and sat in the chair on her own volition. “Perhaps settle in, enjoy the ride. You seemed interested in what I had to show yesterday.”

Benthos tilted his chin up and huffed through his nose. “It is my job to analyze the output of the aurora chair, Kliger. However, you want to read my reaction is your business.”

“Of course, sir.” Natalia’s lips curled pleasantly at him. “But never fear, eventually your torture will be effective. Not all my memories are beautiful women and childish dreams. In fact, few are. Consider this my adjustment period.”

Scorpius peered at Natalia fiercely. What was the point of her delays? While, selfishly, Scorpius was pleased she wanted to cover her entire history, he couldn’t discern the purpose of her resistance to the questions at hand. For a microt, he entertained the idea that this was to his benefit and his alone. Natalia was incredibly intuitive, he’d noted it several times during their time together. But he dismissed this idea. She must have an ulterior motive.

Benthos signaled the controller to begin, and the machine spun into action. Natalia winced as the cerebral combine began to comb through her psyche.

“You liar!” Mara stormed through the apartment, face red with fury. “Do you know what this means? How could you lie about something like that!?”

Natalia followed after her, eyes wet with fresh tears. “No wait, stop. Please!” 

Mara ripped her coat off the hanger, it toppled like a wood baton against teeth. “No fucking way!” She slammed the door as she left.

Natalia whimpered wetly in the middle of the hall before sinking to the ground in a miserable pile. She sobbed with a violence like her organs could liquify and pass through the tears ducts of her eyes, finally leaving her hollow. 

She stiffened when she felt Vasalisa’s soft hands on her back. Vasa wrapped Natalia's chest with one arm and brought her into her folded lap. She rubbed Natalia’s shoulders in soothing circles.

“Shh, shh,” Vasa whispered calmly.

“Aren’t you mad too?” Natalia hacked as soon as she rediscovered the required process to breathe and then speak.

“Yes, I’m furious, Nat. What were you thinking?”

Natalia curled into the red-haired woman's arms and sobbed inconsolably.

Vasa sighed, “you are such a child. How did we not see it before? You didn’t think about it at all did you?”

“Why’s it matter? Who cares how old I am?”

Vasa clicked her tongue, “selfish! I do! Mara does! The club does! It’s illegal! You made us break the law. The club could get shut down. We could lose our jobs, or worse, be arrested! Do you know what Russia does with gay people?”

Between her crossed arms, Natalia peeked up at Vasalisa. Her jaw was clenched taunt and her features couldn't hide her irritation despite the soft motions of her calming hands. Natalia snorted with an ugly gurgle of snot, but realization flashed across her face. “Not lesbians?”

“You want to take that gamble? With my life? Mara’s? Your own? Selfish!” Vasa hissed this time, narrowing her wing-tipped eyes against Natalia’s wide, pleading ones.

“But I’m eighteen now. I thought...you’d want to celebrate with me. Otherwise,” Natalia wasn’t able to handle Vasa’s glare, “I wouldn’t have told you.”

Vasa’s hands stilled. “You’ve learned nothing then.”

Natalia stiffened, “No. I mean, I have. But…” Natalia licked her swollen lips, “what can I do now? Mara hates me. You hate me.” She burst into tears again.

Vasa's chest rose and fell in a labored sigh. “Come on. Have a glass of brandy. It will settle you down.” She collected Natalia off the floor with the skill of a heavyweight wrestler and helped her into the sitting room.

Mara, however, was vindictive and when Natalia went to work that night, her manager informed her she was let go. Scared to go home and face more of Mara’s wrath, Natalia wandered the cold streets of Moscow. She played idly with her new smartphone, and out of the blind need for comfort, as well as a possibility of venting with an almost stranger, she called Natasha’s phone.

Surprisingly, Natasha picked up. “Dva! What the hell! Didn’t expect to get a phone call from you!”

“Natasha!” Natalia returned her friend’s verbal enthusiasm even though internally she was cringing at her bad decision to call. She didn’t really want to speak with her long lost friend, only the self-congratulatory pat on the back for trying. “I’m sorry it’s been so long! Things got a bit touch-and-go two years ago, didn’t it? How have you been? What have you been up to?”

“You won’t believe this,” she expertly paused, “but I’m in Tel Aviv! You should come visit. You’d love it here.”

Natasha’s offer was like an exit door that appeared in Natalia’s life. The simple red light blazed clearly over a door, already cracked for Natalia to slip out without a sound. Natalia left Moscow. While most of the money she made stripping was spent easily, like drinking a tall glass of water, one long, open-mouthed chug, she just got a credit card. That night, while Mara and Vasalisa worked a job that was no longer hers, she packed her bags and bought a plane ticket. This time she left a long note. It hurt brutally to write it, but she promised she’d be back soon. She just needed to clear her head.

Natalia’s first trip on an airplane was spent with her face pressed against the double-pane window, ogling the landscape far below. Natasha met her at the airport in Tel Aviv. As the escalator lowered Natalia down to the baggage claim, Natasha’s similarly oval face was bright with a dusty tan. She wore the perfunctory olive drab of an Israeli soldier with the confident, square-shouldered posture Natalia expected from that position.

Suddenly embarrassed about her tight shirt and pleather mini-skirt, Natalia laced her arms around her naked waist once they separated after their hug.

“I can’t believe you’re actually here!” Natasha smiled excitedly, “You look incredible. What’d you end up doing in Moscow?”

“Modeling,” Natalia matched her smile but wasn’t sure what to compliment in return. Natasha looked healthy and happy, while Natalia was inexplicably self-conscious. She settled for, “I’m so glad you could come pick me up on such short notice! I needed to get out of there. Whew! When was the last time I had a vacation?”

“Probably never!” 

Natalia had never felt so in tune with a person she thought she’d lost to time and circumstance. They both laughed.

“Come on! I have something to show you that you won’t believe!” Natasha collected one of Natalia’s bags and ushered her out into the hottest, brightest sun Natalia had ever experienced. Instantly, Natalia felt cleansed of the Moscow overcast gray that the light had finally reached her skin after centuries living inside a cave. It made each breath she took airier, more lung-filling. She sighed into it.

Natasha drove Natalia to the Mediterranean sea. The cobalt blue stretched off into the horizon and met an equally blue sky. Natalia was stunned speechless that anything on the planet existed that was so perfect. When she noticed the crowded beaches, the heavy cargo ships, the white lateral clouds, she returned to the imperfection of life and found her voice.

“It’s beautiful,” she gasped quietly, “I never want to leave.”

“Ha! Knew it! If you want to be a citizen, it's as easy as joining the army.” Natasha whispered to her conspiratorially.

“You’ve done this before?” At first, Natalia returned her friend’s sly glance, but then threw her head back and laughed.

But the idea held appeal, Natalia liked that Natasha had a career she could be open about. It was obvious she was proud of what she was doing, and while Natalia liked being an exotic dancer, she knew if her family learned that was where the money she sent home every month was coming from, she’d be called a ‘whore’ or worse. They likely already thought that way about Natalia regardless, why prove it to them? 

But if she was in the Israeli Defense Forces? She, a Jewish woman, wanted to become an Israeli citizen, fight for the homeland? Now that would blow her family’s mind!

Natalia took one last long look at the Mediterranean stretched out before her like the beckoning, curling index finger of God. She shrugged. 

“Yeah, okay, why not? Let’s do it.”

Barely eighteen and she was at boot camp. Natalia was fit before but not like this. After the first several sore weeks, she got into the swing of things and really began to enjoy it.

She was excellent at following commands, and if a task was too challenging for her and she failed, it would haunt her for days. She had the disposition for wanting perfection. Her superiors noticed and were blisteringly hard on her, which when she still succeeded sent shivers to her thighs. There was something incredibly appealing about meeting her superior’s demands with unflinching success.

The military taught her krav maga, a brutal fighting technique to disarm and neutralize an attacker. This was her favorite activity from the very beginning. It was so in-bodied, like dancing, but harsh and instinctual. She liked being this coiled element always moments from striking. Her height was both a hindrance and a benefit. It gave her great reach but if she was crowded, those extra milliseconds it took for her to strike her opponent could be the difference between winning or losing.

Her life disappeared in routine. She protected borders. She fired guns. Sometimes, she even killed people.

Despite that snag, her life was finally getting stable enough under her feet to run forward, but she forgot the desert was made of shifting sand. She served her two years, the normal time needed for a citizen in the Israeli Defense Force, but she decided to stay longer. They paid her to go to college, which she did between her responsibilities to the IDF.

Scorpius lingered on these memories. It wasn’t difficult to see that Natalia was happy. Her work was challenging but it was obviously rewarding to her. While Moscow gave her freedom, Tel Aviv gave her purpose.

Natalia liked her work so much she applied for a transfer to the Sayeret division in the Special Forces, the reconnaissance branch of the IDF, and she convinced Natasha to apply as well. After all the examinations were completed, both Natalia and Natasha were accepted. Their first mission was supposedly a simple one, to escort a caravan of relief materials to an outpost over the Palestinian border. Everything was trundling along predictably when they approached their final destination, Natalia was on point in the vanguard.

Natalia craned her neck around a blown-out ruin of a convenience store. The mosques were still calling midday-prayer and the square was empty. She swung back to the soldiers escorting the caravan, to signal them forward. The way was clear. But as she began to signal, a blue spark sprung up in front of the convoy. It was the size of a marble at first and popped into the air about four feet up. Natalia rubbed her eyes, sometimes the desert played strange visual tricks with reflections. However, when she looked at it now, it had expanded like an iridescent soap bubble. She signaled her squad to stop instead, to not progress forward, but they saw it too. It wasn’t some mirage.

The bubble moved, and inside were arcs of hot lightning. It touched the covered truck and left a black crater, perfectly convex, where the driver was, but then it multiplied into smaller bubbles also expanding, rapidly. The bubbling masses devoured her squad, leaving only bones, and it was mushrooming outward. She glanced at Natasha across the alley, who had begun screaming and firing at the phenomena. The thing was multiplying with frightening speed.

“Natasha! Run!” 

Natasha’s eyes flew startled to Natalia and the two sprinted into the town center only to be met with opposing gunfire. Natalia yelped as the bullets struck the dust at her feet and flung herself into cover to return fire. Even while she desperately looked for the attackers in the town’s windows, the shine of the progressing bubbles passed in the corner of her eye. The small desert town was being overrun with them. Natalia lowered her gun instead and yelled at Natasha, who was still firing at the insurgents with a handgun but clutching her leg. 

“Natasha! We need to go!”

“I’ve been shot.” Her friend rasped while popping a fresh magazine into her firearm. “Dear fucking god! What is that thing?!”

The lightning within the multiplying bubbles began to form a thundercloud, and while expanding, the bubbling mass moved like an avalanche.

Natalia fired another round of bullets into one of the buildings and shouted to her friend, “Crawl over here! I’ll cover you. If those idiots stay here they’re dead. If we do, so are we. Now come!”

She blanked the building with bullets as Natasha dragged herself over. When she was close enough, Natalia shouldered her rifle, helped Natasha onto her back so her legs wrapped around Natalia’s middle, her arms around Natalia’s neck, and ran. Natasha snapped her head back, while Natalia labored, eyes locked straight ahead.

“Holy fucking shit, Dva! Dva!”

“Please tell me it stopped!” Natalia panted between paced breaths.

“Dva, stop. Turn around. Look.”

She slowed to a light jog and turned. The outpost was a black crater fizzling with sputtering electrical foam, the leftover remains of the rampaging soap bubble.

“That can’t be from Earth. We didn’t make something like that.” Natasha murmured in awe.

Natalia only glanced up at the sky as if expecting another one to fall directly on top of them, alone in the desert, rupturing them to death in lighting and surface tension.

In the Simulacrum, Scorpius rubbed his chin. He recognized that weapon, not from personal experience but from extensive research decates ago. It was an antique Nebari missile, probably hundreds of cycles old, from one of their initial rebellions. According to records, these missiles were too unpredictable to continue production after the war was settled. The uncontrollable and devastating nature of them was the antithesis of Nebari principles. However, the fact that the mechanisms still worked was a testament to the species’ engineering prowess, but how it ended up on Earth, destroying Natalia’s squadron over ten cycles ago, was odd indeed. 

Natalia hoisted Natasha up higher on her waist, a needed adjustment, and wandered into the desert. She had a navigation kit. The map of the area she had almost memorized, and there was a town to the west. It was walkable in about two days, with Natasha slung over her back, it would be much slower. However, staying anywhere near the site of that bizarre explosion was anxiety-inducing, and neither wanted to risk it. Who knows what would come along now that the outpost was a crater.

They rested during the day in the shadows of sand dunes. Natasha treated her wounds. They rationed their water and ate what they had. The trip stretched into its fifth day, and Natalia was weak-armed, exhausted, and dehydrated when a ploom of dust kicked up along the desert sands. She squinted at the reflection off the top of the humvee.

“Natasha, incoming.”

Even if Natalia made it to the town she would have been a prisoner of war, a bargaining chip to be returned to Israel at some later date. Natasha would have been attended to at least. But getting her brains blown out in the dunes was always a possibility. They tried to hide, but the humvee spun around and doubled back on their position.

“Fuck.” Natalia tossed down her weapon and prepared to surrender. She had no idea if the humvee was friend or foe, but she hoped desperately this wasn’t her last moments alive.

The humvee pulled up, the muzzle of an AKS-74U carbine appeared as soon as the window rolled down.

“Get up. State your purpose.” The rifle wielder spoke Arabic.

Natalia understood his statement even with what little knowledge she had of the language. She swallowed nervously but stood, arms lifted.

“I’m with the IDF,” she returned his Arabic poorly but continued in Hebrew, “there was an explosion. My friend needs medical attention.” 

The soldier loaded his rifle. Natalia saw the flash of his hand and heard the frightening ‘clunk’ of a bullet falling into the chamber.

“Bozhe, pozhaluysta,” _Please, god._ Natalia peeped weakly in Russian.

A hand reached out from the back of the humvee and grabbed the shoulder of the driver. He glanced momentarily at the passenger for a second before lowering the weapon.

“You’re Russian?” said a voice, the owner of the hand from the dark.

Natalia couldn’t make out the face from the shadows of the back seat.

“Da,” Natalia tried to sharpen her eyes to see who was asking. Whoever it was shuffled, the humvee rocked slightly on its suspension, and the back door opened. The man that stepped out was in nondescript military khaki but had an alluring majesty that made the basic uniform appear rich beyond comparison.

Scorpius recognized him immediately.

“What a coincidence! Because so am I,” beamed Dimitri.


	10. Open All Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are half-way done germs and worms! Thanks for sticking with this.
> 
> Also, the dubious consent is in this chapter.

# Open All Night

Natalia blinked rapidly in the desert sun. This man was quite possibly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. He was like a mirage, shimmering in the desert, except broad-shouldered with a tapered waist and perfect teeth. 

“Terrorist,” she responded dumbly without adequate will to put force behind her word.

Dimitri thrust Natalia against the humvee and patted her down from shoulders to ankles. “Hmm, charming. Fancy meeting you two _comrades_ out here in the middle of nowhere. What are the odds?”

Natalia spun around with her hands on her head. Finally, her fight instincts kicked in, her eyes flaming brightly. “You’re with Hamas?”

Dimitri collected Natasha from the sand to perform the same treatment. “Oh yes, on their payroll, but not a Muslim if that’s what you’re asking. I’m an engineer.”

“Bullshit,” Natalia rasped. Her cantine had run dry a few hours ago. As much as she would’ve enjoyed spitting in this man’s face, he was possibly their best chance out of the desert.

He laughed lightly. “Would you believe that the IDF has destroyed a lot of Palestine? Would you believe they might actually need engineers regardless of denomination? You’re clear. Now do I need to handcuff you both, or will you keep your hands to yourself?”

“We are your prisoners?” Natasha scanned him over.

Dimitri leaned against the vehicle looking every ounce like a military men calendar pinup. “My prisoners? You’d be so lucky. Not everyone will be as nice as me where we are going, but they’ll at least fix your leg, give you water, feed you. Now I insist, get in the humvee.”

Natasha spat on the ground in disgust but did as she was told. Natalia was surprised she still had enough moisture in her mouth. Natasha slid into the open door while Natalia glanced into the far distance instead, following her old footprints in the sand with her eyes. Not because she humored the idea to bolt away from her enemy but to contemplate their current proximity to the destroyed town, and the weapon that caused it. 

Dimitri wandered closer to share her gaze.

“You mentioned an explosion,” his voice was low and quiet, coaxing her gently to respond.

“I’m not telling you anything,” she said distantly, but when she spun her head away from the horizon, Dimitri was hovering closer than she thought. He’d pushed his glasses back up into his hairline to try to catch a glimpse of what she was seeing in the distance. His honey golden eyes were now locked onto her dark ones.

“I get it. I’m the enemy.” He snorted, but like everything he said, he spoke through a bewitching smile. “Please I insist, get in the humvee. You’ll feel better after some fresh water and the barest hint of the _shittiest_ AC.” 

Still, he had yet to stop plunging into Natalia’s eyes with his own, and Natalia, with the experiences of a stripper used to penetrating stares, didn’t back down from a challenge like this. So even while she returned to the door of the humvee, she held his gaze.

“Waiting on you,” she couldn’t stop the back-handed sass from slipping out.

For a single second, his face bloomed with an awakened surprise, before transforming into his usual bright smile. He dropped his glasses back down on his nose and ran a hasty hand through his hair as if minutely flabbergasted by her cheek.

Natalia was already sliding inside when Dimitri returned to join them. With Natalia folded into the middle, her thighs were crammed between Natasha’s and Dimitri’s, but unlike with Natasha’s, Dimitri’s was electrifying. She was acutely aware of his leg pressing against hers. The Muslim in the front passenger seat kept his gun’s muzzle trained on them the entire drive into town.

Once in town, Natalia’s stomach sunk. Despite Dimitri’s status with the locals, Natalia and Natasha were brutishly dragged from the humvee at gunpoint before they were separated. Seeing her friend struggle while being taken away, sent Natalia into fresh waves of panic. They could easily die here too, or worse, get tortured out of their minds. She remained kneeling in the hot sun, her hair stringy with her own sweat, and her face burned pink. From across the square, Dimitri was speaking with a local that apparently determined what happened to her, and his expression was souring, which to Natalia was a bad sign. 

Eventually, Dimitri growled as he moved away from the man, stomping decisively back to Natalia.

“They’re going to torture you. Tell them everything, don’t resist, and I’ll get you out.” Then he reached out and slid a thumb over her sunburnt bottom lip. It was barely a hovering touch, but it jolted her with the strength to stand when the men on either side of her lifted her. She was able to walk toward her own torture.

Scorpius crossed his arms over his chest. His scowl had deepened into sharp lines. While he was interested in her interactions with Dimitri, he wasn’t particularly invested in seeing her tortured any more than she already was, at least not at this point in time. The chair often elevated negative experiences, and he could imagine this is what she meant earlier when she said her life wasn’t ‘all beautiful women and childish dreams’. 

Although Scorpius had no interest in watching these sequences and opted to fast-forward through the recording, Natalia in the aurora chair did remember them. When Scorpius resumed normal speed after her torture was completed, her eyes were tightly closed and wincing. Benthos rocked on his heels with the simple pleasure of knowing his machine dented her impressive mental shields.

The Natalia in Palestine didn’t cooperate under torture either. She told them nothing and was eventually processed into a hot room where she was fed intermittently and given water. Every few days, they’d take her out for a walk under gunpoint. Although Natalia had disregarded Dimitri's advice completely and told her captors nothing, he would still join her on these walks. 

They didn't speak about the torture or capture except when Dimitri updated her on Natasha, who was up and walking as well. Mostly they talked about their experiences in Moscow. Dimitri was born there and came to work for Hamas for similar reasons Natalia joined the IDF, to see something new, to escape the cold. However, she withheld some major life choices. She didn’t like the idea of sharing her lesbian triad or her history as a stripper with this man that had her captor’s ear. 

Throughout their conversations, it became obvious Dimitri came from wealth. The way he spoke about his family, it sounded to Natalia almost like _old_ monarchy. The idea turned her stomach that he was so involved with the corrupt politics she despised, but she also envied his childhood with servants, vacations, and parties. He went to the finest schools and universities. He could pick and choose between the nicest clothes. She was as dazzled as she was in the strip club as a teenager, but for entirely different reasons. 

When had any intelligent, wealthy, beautiful man ever truly given her the time of day beyond gawking over her appearance? She currently looked horrendous, and yet, Dimitri would remember things she said to him and come back with insightful responses days later. Even as a prisoner, he would dote on her. Bring her small sweets, hidden in napkins. Share his books with her.

Throughout these conversations, they both discovered they loved fighting for fun. Natalia used Krav Maga, but Dimitri had trained in various techniques since he was a child; jiu-jitsu, muay thai, kickboxing, capoeira, and also, krav maga. Even in her brief tours out of her makeshift cell, they shared past successes, failures, and even shared moves. While walking around the settlement, Natalia learned a lot from Dimitri. He knew so much.

On Natalia’s next trip out of her room, the guard guided her to a small, graying gymnasium. Dimitri trotted over, already glistening with sweat. His white t-shirt left little to Natalia’s imagination. She yanked her eyes away to focus on the thread-bare mat of the ring.

“You organized this for me?” She wondered aloud, before spinning on her heel to face him with an excited smile.

Dimitri’s teeth peeked over his bottom lip, “Of course, but I’ll admit, it’s more for me. I’m curious about what you can do. No one likes fighting me down here.”

“Why? Ooooh, you fight dirty, don’t you?” Natalia shot back.

“What self-respecting Russian wouldn't,” he smirked, which to Scorpius was a very familiar expression. He’d seen this specific smirk many times on Natalia herself.

Natalia snorted, “then you know what you’re in for, pretty boy!” Her eyes slipped over him before back up at the closing door as the guard left. “No guard?”

“You’ll have to be on your best behavior. I would hate to have to restrain you,” he cracked his neck muscle while wearing the slyest of expressions.

“I’d like to see you try!” 

“I intend to,” his smile was barely there now. What replaced it was a leveled seriousness that electrified Natalia.

“Let me get warmed up. You had a head start.” And she stripped down to her white shirt and took off her boots to match his bare feet. He lingered as she began stretching. To keep the conversation going, Natalia prattled on.

“How can you even be a boxer with a face like yours. It’s too…” But then she caught herself blushing, “you know how you look right?”

His smile hadn’t returned and his simmering intensity continued to bear down on her. “I know how I look. I’m a very good fighter.”

Natalia hadn’t gone into a fight aroused before, but she was determined to not let it affect her. Yes, she was out of practice, but before fighting seemed second nature to her if only she could draw from that source again. Dimitri would likely ease her into it anyway.

When they squared up on the mat and dropped into their stances, Dimitri barely had a hint of expression except for something dark and animalistic living in his brown eyes. It unnerved her. Her hair seemed to lift along her back like she was a mouse in the field feeling the scrutiny of an avian predator above. They both knew when to move, but Natalia’s step forward was immediately blocked, twisted, and flipped.

His movement was too fast. The wind was knocked out of her, she choked out a laugh. “What the fuck!”

“Again.” Dimitri bounced upright instantaneously. He was like a man coiled. 

She looked at him differently from her back on the mat.

“What the fuck!” So much for easing her into it.

“Again!” he snapped angrily.

Natalia obliged. She practically jumped into her stance. Three more matches went like this, and Natalia’s pride burned fitfully. On the fourth, she slapped the mat in a rage, brushed a loosened strand of hair back, and glared at Dimitri, who was still looking infuriatingly blank.

“That height is wasted on you,” he goaded, “you have no idea what to do with it.”

She cracked her finger joints one at a time and snarled at him. Natalia launched at him aggressively, but once again he caught her wrist, slammed a fist into her solar plexus, and flipped her to the ground. This time she spun up, fighting the spasm in her lung, and tackled him in the middle. They tussled like idiot children over a broken toy. 

Natalia was furious, spitting, and red-faced. She was a prisoner for fuck’s sake! Her anger had no place to off-gas. It had been stewing for weeks since her capture. Now, this infuriating beautiful man was going to tease her about her height!

Dimitri caught her assaulting arm, and threw her face down against the mat. She huffed in the dust motes kicked up in their fight until he unbuckled her pants, then she stiffened. When he pulled her waist strap down her hips, she struggled against his iron grip. 

“Dimitri!?”

“Shhhh,” his wrapped hand covered her mouth, “the guard will hear us.”

Natalia realized acutely how wet she was. Her panic was only making it worse, but his other hand snaked over her hip and descended to her sensitive clit. Now she wiggled in a different way, toward his hand instead of fidgeting away. While she’d been stewing in rage for weeks, she also had been stewing in stress and tension with nowhere safe to release. 

Dimitri fingered her firmly until she was hanging on the edge, trying to grind him into the right spot. He let go of her gasping mouth to kiss her and unbuckle his own pants. Then he slid a hand up her shirt and bra to stroke one of her breasts. She pressed her ass back against his hips and burgeoning excitement shot through her to feel his hot length between her cheeks. She whimpered into his mouth.

Dimitri used a single hand to guide his cock under her ass into her cunt. The breach still managed to shock her despite the rutting she was doing against him. He left her tits exposed on the dusty mat to wrap his hand into her hair. He yanked her back against him. With him rooted inside, he went back to fingering her clit. Her muscles gripped him and she rocked her hips, inhaling filth through her open drooling mouth. The pads of his fingers swept over her sensitive nubbin until she was shuddering in release. When she cried her orgasm, he silenced her with his mouth in another lingering kiss.

He dragged her hips higher to meet his and thrusted in fast pulses. She clenched around him in another shattering climax as he throbbed into her one final time. He grunted into her neck. His gritted teeth and gums pressed to her jugular before he pecked at the edge of her jaw almost demurely. He finally rolled off her.

The desert air hit her sweat-soaked back with instant relief. She was still stunned, but she blinked it away under Dimitri’s inquisitive eyes. He was always staring at her. Sometimes it was bizarre, but it also made her feel special like he was seeing into her.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” his voice was casual despite what had just happened.

Natalia propped herself up on her elbows. Her eyes dropped down as if the dusty mats held the answer. “I don’t know. I’d like to, but it sounds impossible, like a dream. Why?”

“Because I love you.”

She bit back a ‘tch’. It was like she had just sucked on something pleasantly sour. _Love_ hit her in the pinch of her cheek.

“It’s not funny,” he chastised sharply, “I love you. I saw you in the desert, with your hands up, your eyes, and I knew. You’re like me. We are meant for each other.”

Natalia wasn’t sure what to say, so she reached out her hand and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. He leaned over to kiss her again. This kiss made Natalia heart swell in her chest. He moved past her teeth with his tongue. She helplessly sighed into it.

“You’ve never been loved. I’ve seen this before. That’s why you don’t recognize it, but you felt it too. I know you did.” Dimitri whispered into her.

And that was true, Natalia didn’t know the first thing about love, absolutely zilch, but if this was what it felt like, it was already incredible. She had never been seen before. Dimitri scoured her until she was raw. Being in his sight was empowering. He was someone she wanted to strive to impress. It drove her to be better. She wanted more. She was ready to pledge her life to it.

Scorpius’s scowl continued to deepen. He was unfamiliar with jealousy. It had never been an emotion that plagued his relationships before. In the past, he actually enjoyed a healthy dollop of voyeurism in his sexual recreation. But this was patently different, he already disliked Dimitri, watching him _seed_ Natalia particularly disgusted him. Even the tantalizing dynamics of prisoner and captor couldn’t shift his disgruntled frown. He opted to move away from that scene and perhaps skip through the rest of their interactions while Natalia was a POW.

From the blur of her weeks in Palestine, Scorpius witnessed the intensity of their _love_ spiral outward, expanding like a hungry vortex. It eclipsed Natalia’s relationship with Natasha. When she was able to meet again with her friend, she only spoke of Dimitri. Her eyes glittered with unveiled awe anytime she talked about him.

“But Dva,” Natasha’s mouth pinched, “eventually, we’re going to go back to the IDF. This is crazy. He’s working for Hamas. This place could be a bombed-out cinder tomorrow.”

Natalia’s face sharpened bitterly. “I’m not going back to the IDF.”

“What?!” Natasha snapped her head toward Natalia. “Dva! The fuck! Tel Aviv! University! You love the IDF!”

“I thought I did, but I didn’t know what love was. Dimitri is going to pay my ransom and we’re going to go live in Moscow. He’s almost done here.”

Natasha shook her head in disbelief. Pain and confusion were clear on her face. “Natalia...I don’t know if Dimitri is good for you. Don’t you think that all happened a little fast? You’re talking about going AWOL.”

“You’re just jealous!” She snapped, “I saw how you acted when you first met him. You’re just surprised that he chose me over you!”

Natasha clearly struggled to swallow her immediate response. Anger flashed in her eyes. “What the hell are you talking about!? That’s not it, Dva! You’re talking about abandoning everything you cared about for years to a guy you’ve known for what, two months! He’s a bad guy! He works for fucking Hamas! He’s probably antisemitic! He’s probably responsible for that weird bomb that destroyed our squad!”

Natalia crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at Natasha. “You should be happy for me.”

“You’re crazy!” Natasha hissed, “You’re fucking crazy! You’re stubborn and crazy. This isn’t how life works. It’s not a fairy tale.”

“How the hell would you know!?” Natalia stood hastily, shaking off Natasha’s comments like shaking off a bothersome insect. “Some people get a fairy tale. I want a fairy tale.”

For a moment, Natasha’s mouth hung open aghast. She snapped it shut and looked away.

“Fine.” Natasha rolled to her feet. “Good luck with that.” She limped away. A week later she was returned to the IDF.

Natalia went back to Moscow clinging to Dimitri.

Benthos cleared his throat over Natalia, trapped in her chair. Unlike in the previous session, Natalia appeared tenderized. The skin around her eyes was slightly discolored as if forming a shallow bruise and she was drenched with sweat. Her eyes flashed up to Benthos at his guttural chortle. 

“Are you beginning to take this exercise seriously yet? Are you ready to show me why you broke into this command carrier?” Benthos leaned into her feverish face.

Her crooked smile was less confident now. “I’m not sure. Ask me tomorrow?”

Benthos frowned tightly and huffed, but didn’t reply. His pointed glare was enough of a response.

“It’s a date then,” Natalia sighed wearily. 

The recording ended, and the Simulacrum brightened. Scorpius tapped the console with his gloved fingers. He was a patient man. There would be another recording the following evening. It wasn’t difficult to wait. However, unlike the previous night, he felt cruelly bitter. An uncontrolled snarl itched in his spine, lodged like a thorn. If that’s what Natalia wanted, he was thankful he had ended their cohabitation when he did. He had put off his work for long enough to review Natalia’s history, so he disappeared into the dark corridor to return to his quarters.


	11. Family Man: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were wondering where all the abuse tags fit into this story, they are all here in Family Man: Part 1, 2, and 3. These were brutally hard for me to write, I can only imagine they are uncomfortable to read. If it becomes too much, I am going to put a summary of the story in the next chapter, Italian Girls, so I don't lose any of you, my precious readers. Family Man concludes Act 2. I think after this we'll all be ready for a change of pace. Once again, thanks for reading.

#  Family Man

##  Part 1

Scorpius stayed awake most of the night working. There was little motivation to close his eyes already knowing his thoughts would be plagued by a singular person. Witnessing her past was exhausting. He considered not watching the following recordings in a spurt of sheer biting bitterness. What did he hope to gain from her past? The present was more pressing.

Despite his overnight efforts, zero progress was made on Empress Novia the following day. She refused to meet with Scorpius, deferring to a possible appointment date solar days away. Being idle in orbit wasn’t ideal for Scorpius in his current foul mood. Even his aide was giving him a wide berth. When the third aurora chair recording appeared later that day in his console, Scorpius begrudgingly decided to view it.

After all, he would be lying to himself if he pretended to no longer desire answers to Natalia’s secrecy. Also, he was a glutton for punishment, and the bizarre emotional turmoil the recordings stirred in him was worth exploring for this reason alone.

In the Simulacrum, he pulled up the third recording, Record 829-HY63-03, with a quick gesture across the panel. He settled against a wall with his arms across his chest, steeling himself for a laborious human romance.

Natalia came quietly toward the aurora chair. She took her seat with a slight nod to Benthos.

“No irritating quip today, I see,” Benthos remarked dryly.

Natalia smiled sadly. “Not today.”

“Fine by me.” Benthos signaled to the controller and the machine spun to life.

The ballroom was as white and decorated as the wedding cake. Victorian mirrors, ornate frosted carvings, red velvet curtains, and massive murals surrounded the bustling crowd. Nearly everyone was ruddy-faced from the open bar, and more than a few men and women, no matter how impeccably dressed, were swaying drunkenly while singing. Natalia wasn’t among this majority. Instead, she was locked tightly in Dimitri’s arms as they spun around the patterned wooden dance floor.

“It’s so beautiful, Dimitri!” Natalia was tucked against her husband's chest and her lavish silk wedding dress billowed around her. The trail cascaded from her waist like piped frosting. Her painted lips spread wide in an adoring smile, her eyes shimmering with love. She was as decorated as the room itself but infinitely more eye-catching. “I have never been happier.”

“You’re absolutely radiant, Dva.” He spoke with a husky rasp into her ear, “it’s making it hard for me to enjoy the party. I want to take you to bed right now.”

“What’s keeping us?” Natalia lustily cooed back.

“Work, Dva, always work. You see those men over there?” He twirled Natalia until she was bent toward a group of shady-looking Slavs before he spun her back. “And the men over there?” He gestured his head over his shoulder to another party of suspicious suit-wearers.

“They’re part of the Russian mob, too?” Natalia giddily whispered. After returning from Palestine with Dimitri, he revealed that he wasn’t only an engineer. He was licensed as one, but his main responsibility was to his family business, black-market opportunities within the complex hive of the Russian mafia.

“Not so loud!” teased Dimitri, who snipped at her ear lobe.

Natalia giggled into her hand.

“If you’re to be part of this family, my love,  _ my wife _ , you need to start paying attention.” Dimitri’s sudden sharpness dissipated his playful tone from before. She straightened into seriousness. “Those men are from opposing families. They accepted our invitation because weddings are a kind of common ground. Who starts crap at a rivaling family’s wedding? Doing so would create a reason for their family’s destruction.”

He concluded with a stiff superiority before continuing.

“I’ve chosen you, Dva. You’re my number two. Together we will make war.”

“Tonight?” she glimmered at him, amazed that blood and romance went so well together in her mind.

“No, not tonight! Are you retarded? Pay attention,” Dimitri gripped her arms uncomfortably tight, “How can you rile me up this badly? Listen for once!”

“I’m sorry. Forgive me,” she felt her face heat, but she smiled through it. Dimitri had told her time and time again he preferred her smile over her frown.

“We sell weapons, Dva. That is our primary business. We sell weapons to any force that asks for them. Do you follow the One Earth movement in the news?” He paused for Natalia to quietly nod. His grip hadn’t yet slackened. “Good. Stay on top of current events.  _ One Earth _ will never work because the world cannot unite. It is because  _ people _ cannot unite. Because the threat is not space, the threat is always other human beings. War is inevitable. These men here...”

Dimitri threw his chin at them with disgust.

“They are here because they are weak. They want to end the fighting. You and I will destroy them.” Using his grip, he bowed her forward to kiss her lips. Natalia sank against his open mouth, upset or aroused or both. He dropped her arms finally, but before pulling away entirely, Dimitri pressed his thumb against a bruise on her cheekbone. The purple skin had begun to appear from underneath her makeup. “Fix your face, Dva. Don't embarrass me.” 

Then, Dimitri abruptly left her on the dance floor to approach the Slavik group he had pointed out earlier. Natalia cupped her own cheek to hide the surfacing blemish as she hurried to the bathroom. Her arms ached where his fingers left their impressions. The pain was warming, embarrassing, empowering, and gave her the succinct sense that Dimitri loved her body. Natalia did too, but for her body’s resilient strength. The bruise now reappearing on her cheek came from earlier that week, when the two were fighting. Dimitri was building her into a stronger fighter. She had never felt so indomitably powerful.

Still, Natalia dodged into the bathroom almost on the brink of tears. She was such a little fool asking Dimitri those stupid questions, but she knew she would eventually learn. Dimitri was a very good teacher, and so patient with her. She dabbed out the bruise on her cheek with a fingertip of concealer. With the mark successfully hidden, she shook a few painkillers out into her palm and swallowed. 

Afterward, she wanted a glass of fresh champagne before looking for her family. They were invited, of course, but she’d been avoiding them. She missed having friends, or at least what she thought of as her friends. Dimitri often reminded Natalia that her old friends were leeching off her brilliance and weren’t worth the effort. With her champagne in hand, she found her brother Micha and her mother at the bar. They talked into the night as the wedding spun on.

During the next few months, Natalia was indoctrinated into the Russian Mafia. Being a gutter rat from Siberia, the differences between her upbringing and Dimitri’s were worlds apart. She scrambled to learn everything she could about the business, anything to not be so hopelessly out-of-her-depth. Manners were perhaps the hardest to learn. The aristocracy put a lot of emphasis on which fork to use at which stage in the meal. Then, of course, there were infinite events she had to attend and prevent her Siberian slang from slipping into her tailored accent. Somehow she did all this while pregnant. 

For Natalia, her new life was a whirlwind. She was constantly playing catch up with a fantastic world she never expected to be a part of. Then of course there was Dimitri, who was sometimes extraordinarily charming but was more commonly in a nasty, scathing mood. Natalia tried her best to be the perfect partner, but she had to admit that, at times, marriage was difficult. 

Scorpius watched her struggle blankly. Throughout her time with Dimitri, Scorpius practiced emotionally distancing himself. He sped through what he disliked which was becoming large swathes of memories, either when Dimitri doted on her and she shimmered with affection or when Dimitri abused her until she wilted in confusion and pain. He also blazed through events like her first child’s birth. 

They cut her open to get the baby out. She was unconscious throughout the procedure, but when they presented her son to her as she woke, Natalia immediately forgot her weariness. She beamed at the baby. Dimitri appeared late, named the child after himself, and then chastised Natalia for her new scar. Scorpius snapped his teeth even at the fast forward review of the memory. He preferred watching memories where Dimitri was absent.

In another recollection years after the wedding, Natalia smacked her whip’s tip in the horse’s hindquarters. She charged through the forest on the tremendous dark animal. It’s hooves trampling the loam and underbrush to shreds. The leaves were changing colors and in the golden hour of the afternoon, everything was light-drenched or long-shadowed. She’d learned how to ride in the last two years. Her horse was a late birthday gift from Dimitri, a purebred gelding. Her responsibilities in maintaining the creature were minuscule, since the stable was staffed, but she enjoyed these afternoon getaways to herself. The stability and control over the magnificent beast was something she lacked in the rest of her life. The raw muscle between her legs thundered away.

When the dacha came into view, she slowed the horse to a trot. The vacation house wasn’t exactly a country cottage with fifteen bedrooms, a full staff, a chef, and a five-car garage. This was only one of many homes she lived in, including an apartment in Moscow, houses in St. Petersburg, Cairo, Sochi, and Florence. She could barely keep track of them all. Her possessions lived spread out in seven places at once. This horse, for example, could be sent to anyone of those places on a moment’s notice. Even if she spent a fortune on a single ride through the foreign countryside, the cost of shipping meant nothing to them.

As she approached the open doors of the stable, a servant caught the horse’s reins and guided her to a dismount block. She flung herself down, thanked the man for his help, and hugged the creature’s head. The gelding had gorgeous, bottomless pool eyes. They were incredibly soulful, rimmed with long drooping lashes. Natalia rubbed a cheek on its white-starred forehead and let it be led away. She walked back to the house in her riding boots and her clinging pants, while she shook her hair down. This was when another servant caught up with her and guided her swiftly to the back patio.

Kneeling on the brick paving were four men, heads bagged in black and their hands tied behind their backs. Two guards stood off the side at ease with machine guns and full body armor. Out in the yard beyond the patio, the house’s AI turrets hulked across the grass. Only one was paying attention to the scene on the patio. At first, Natalia had hated their cold camera eyes, but they did make her feel marginally safer given her ranking at the top of the Nikolayev clan. 

As Natalia wandered over, one of the guards offered her a handgun, which she took without even checking the heft. She nodded to him, and he pulled off the black sack obscuring the first prisoner’s face. The man underneath was an older man, bruised and bloody around an eye. His balding head wisped in the late afternoon sun.

“Nikolayev! I should have known!”

“Hello, Piotr! It appears you know why you’re here, so I’m going to ask you once. Can your family and mine come to terms?”

Piotr spit on the ground. “The day  _ we _ come to terms will be the day I eat—.”

Natalia shot him in the face. The other prisoners collectively flinched.

“Next,” Natalia gestured to the second prisoner, who was swiftly unbagged by the same guard.

“And you, Sergei? Are you smarter than your father?” He was a younger man but broader than Piotr, light-eyed and equally as disheveled.

“On my honor, I’d rather die than have us join with Nikolayev. Go to hell.”

Natalia shot him too. He folded silently over the previous prisoner’s corpse. The third man, unbagged, had startled wide eyes.

“I yield!” he gasped, panic-stricken.

“Ahhh, Alexei! That’s excellent.” Natalia turned to the fourth bagged prisoner and shot them. Concern flew over Alexei’s face as Natalia handed her handgun over to the guard. She stripped off her riding gloves theatrically. “Get Alexei cleaned up for dinner. If he causes any trouble, cut off his toes, then his fingers, then shoot his knee caps. After that, I doubt he’d be  _ able _ to cause any more trouble.” 

The guard nodded curtly.

She leaned down over the aggrieved man to pat his cheek. “Cheer up Alexei. You’re alive. We’ll sort out the rest together. We’re partners now.” With business concluded she entered the house to change. Waiting for her, in her bedroom, was a large trussed box from Bulgari sitting on top of her bedcover. She undid the ribbon almost as a second thought as she leveraged off her boots. Inside, was a large emerald necklace encrusted with diamonds in white platinum. She blandly stared at it for a moment before rooting around the discarded ribbon for the cream card.

_ Wear at dinner tonight, with the red dress I like. X Dimitri. _

Natalia wondered if she would be able to guess which dress he wanted or if she should prepare for a rough evening. She rubbed her eyes, dropped the diamond gift haphazardly in the box, and finished changing. After showering she eyed the necklace again. It was a swoon-worthy gift. Dimitri was always thinking of her, regardless of where he disappeared to or for how long. Despite wearing a basic, high collar sweater, she put the emerald necklace on and studied it in the mirror. She had to remind herself again that she was incredibly lucky, that no marriage was perfect, that good things took effort. Natalia decided to wear it along with some simple silver Cartier bangles. He’d like that, she was sure. After dabbing on some fresh makeup, she went in search of her toddler son. He was in the drawing-room with his au pair. 

As soon as she walked in, young Dimitri threw down his toys and ran over. “Mama!”

“Hello!” her voice was melodic. She lifted him giddily into her arms. A giant smile spread over her face and her eyes brightened. “My little prince! I missed you! How was your day? Have you been good to Joceline?”

The boy nodded vigorously. “Yes, mama. I caught a frog! Jo-sie-line told me about tadpoles, but I didn’t find any.”

“A frog! Wow! Did you know if you kiss a frog it might become a prince?”

Dimitri’s face scrunched up, “Bleh! Mama! I don’t want a prince! I want a frog!”

“Well,” Natalia kissed his forehead and whispered into his curls, “maybe for mama then.”

“Don’t you already have a prince?” The adult Dimitri leaned in the doorway. Fear rioted up Natalia’s spine. 

She smiled warmly at her husband to cover her discomfort, but she turned from him anyway to speak to her son. “So you did kiss that frog after all?! Look, a prince in the doorway!”

Dimitri’s tight expression didn’t drop. “Dva, you’re greedy. One is enough for you.”

Natalia’s face twisted into the picture of a coy smile as she continued to dote on the boy. “Tell that to popa.  _ One _ should be enough for anyone, but if he didn’t start having two or three, I’d probably be content with only one too,” she mumbled with the boy in her arms like they were sharing a secret. The boy didn’t understand the conversation and continued to confusedly clutch at his mother’s sweater.

She still wore her smile like her favorite hand-me-down coat of her childhood.

“Where have you been anyway?” 

“Cleaning up your mess.” He strode forward and grabbed her arm. “We need to talk. Privately.”

Natalia stiffened as she lowered her son to the rug. “Bye sweetheart. I’ll visit with you later. Be good.” She kissed him lightly before Dimitri senior dragged her roughly out of the room.

She shook off his grip as soon as they left the drawing-room. “Dimitri! What mess?!”

“Alexei Preobrazhensky, that mess!”

Natalia stilled. “That’s not—. The Preobrazhensky are in black-market weapons deals, so are we. We come together. We are stronger. We’re talking particulars tonight.” Her eyes sharpened into slits. “What did you do Dimitri?”

“Dva, you’re very beautiful,” he wound her hair into his fist. She twitched in his grip preparing for the inevitable.

“Alexei is dead then,” she murmured stiffly.

Dimitri’s grip on her hair tightened. “You’re not very smart. You don’t learn your place in this family or this business. Time and time again I have to remind you.”

“You weren’t there, Dimitri. I did what I thought was right without you,” Natalia kept her voice level and calm. Raising her voice would only draw his ire. “Where were you?”

He yanked her hair abruptly down, making Natalia slam her knees into the tiles.

“The question is  _ loyalty. _ You question my loyalty. I question Alexei Preobrazhensky’s ability for loyalty. Are you loyal to me Dva? You accept my gifts.” He flicked her necklace with a finger, “but are you really loyal to me?”

He yanked her hair sharply. She went slack in his grip. Tears stung her eyes as her scalp roared in protest. “Yes always, but you lie to me,” she pledged while wincing.

“If you are loyal you’ll listen to me. Preobrazhensky is dead because he cannot be loyal to a family that killed his own. We will take his territory, his clients, which will make us stronger. It’s this unification bullshit that makes us weak. The One Earth movement doesn’t account for human nature. We will always kill each other, no matter what the threats are in the greater universe. Unification would ruin our family. As for my loyalty, don’t question it. I’ll kill anyone who touches you, Dva. I’ll make sure you watch.”

He released her mane. Her hair follicles prickled in relief, but her knees still throbbed. 

“You’re a disappointment.” His eyes blazed with hate or love, Natalia wasn't sure of the difference between the two anymore.

Natalia’s chest stung. Her wrist bangles clattered against the tile. She wouldn’t get up until Dimitri had left her. If she was standing, she would attract more of his ire. 

“You claim you’re loyal but you fawn over our son,” he peered at her through his long lashes.

Natalia snapped her head up at him, her eyes wide. “What? He’s our son. You can’t possibly feel threatened by a child?”

“I expect your honesty here, Dva. I’ll know if you are lying, and you’ll be punished.”

Natalia’s brow crashed together over her wide dark eyes. She was boxed in. To cloak her fear, she smiled at him. “I would never lie to you. I love you both equally.”

Dimitri’s face was as blank as a frozen lake, clear and icy. “You’re a bad liar, Dva.” He cast her a last over-the-shoulder look as he left her alone in the hall. 

She stayed completely still for long minutes after trying to calm her internal panic. Dimitri’s retaliations always came later, when she least expected them. She almost wept.


	12. Family Man: Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wouldn't be a Farscape fanfic without a hallucinogenic mental breakdown. This was nuts to write...or should I say, crackers.

# Family Man

## Part 2

Another disastrous dinner with Dimitri ended with him dropping his silverware with a clatter and the scrapping of his chair on the stone. She had thrown a wine glass at him. It had shattered near his arm. The red drenched his impeccably fine white sleeve. He had berated her again for some simple misstep, like not taking his coat or lighting his cigar when he came home, but she had been doing his work yet again while he was _fuck-all_ who knows. It wasn’t like she could time his arrival. He was inconsistent, but he had the constant nerve to critique her time management skills.

She was pleased to be rid of him, but also fearful of his unavoidable impending wrath. When she finished her dinner, alone, Natalia stood to go kiss her son good night. 

As she stood, the floor cantilevered like she was on a ship, pitching over the waves on a blustery sea. 

“That’s odd,” she murmured to herself. 

She didn’t often get migraines but she decided to take some headache medication. Dimitri was likely gone for the evening. She had heard the gunning of one of his Lamborghinis leaving the garage. Perhaps after tucking her boy in, she’d leave the house herself. The idea of being exposed and in-bed when Dimitri came home was an unpleasant thought. Recently, either from jealousy, anger, or a simple desire for uncomplicated affection, she had been seeing someone else on the side. Natalia hoped that he might be free this evening. A little intimacy and comfort would help her decompress a little.

Natalia shook two pills out in her hand. They were gold gel caps. She was used to blue, but these drug companies kept changing their capsules, who could keep up? She read the label again regardless, ibuprofen, and examined the swirling pills up close. Dimitri reminded her often her memory was terrible. She shrugged and swallowed them with a glass of water.

She snapped the medicine cabinet shut and nausea rocked through her. Deja’vu. It was like she could see herself shutting the cabinet again and again infinitely. Vertigo. She had the sudden impression she’d been in this exact moment thousands of times. For a second, it felt like her entire life was her clicking the medicine cabinet closed with no room for anything else. With a final snap to the cabinet, she forgot the fight at dinner as well as her plans for the evening. Instead, she wandered off to bed like an innocent girl with barely a care in the world, slipped under the covers, and fell asleep.

It was mid-day when she woke up, but she was fully dressed and holding a coffee in a cafe in central Moscow. Whiplash shot up her neck, but there was no accident to explain the pain. Her aging mother was in front of her, patting her hand.

“Don’t break his heart Dva. Be a good wife. Keep him happy! It’s amazing he even looked your way in the first place, scrawny girl.”

“I’m trying, ma,” she tried to shake off her rocketing unease with a simple head shake, “but...” She was hesitant to divulge any more details. “Sometimes he hurts me.”

Her ma shuffled upright haughtily.

“Being a wife isn’t always easy, Dva. It’s hard work. Dimitri is a good man. He’s done so much for you, for our family. The Kligers haven’t returned to Moscow since the gulag! It’s amazing! Are you going to throw that all away? I raised you tougher than this.” She cast a slighted glare at her daughter before sighing and continuing to pat her daughter’s hand. 

Natalia had more she wanted to say, but her headache was back again. She fished around in her bag for her migraine medication and shakily washed them down with coffee, but as the pills dissolved in her stomach it was like the whole discussion with her mother disappeared. She didn’t remember the headache, the pills. Her hand was empty. Her mother was gone. A young waitress stood where she once sat.

“Miss, are you okay? You’ve sat here all day. We’re closing now.” 

Natalia jerked up to standing, scared beyond reason. Her mind felt compressed volcanically. The molten, shifting materials that made up her thoughts condensed into solid matter. There was no light, only a coursing, sinking weight, dragging her into darkness and lost days. She had no idea how long she’d been pushed along in the undercurrents of her subconscious before she was sucked into a new present moment, or what she thought was the present.

“Can you get me and my son out?” Natalia had found the last phone booth in Moscow. She was making the glass walls steamy with her breath and panic.

“You haven’t told us anything, Mrs. Nikolayev. We can’t make those kinds of promises. You need to tell us first what you know about the black market, about how Dimitri is procuring illegal alien weapons.”

“I don’t know where he’s getting them,” Natalia pleaded into the phone. “I can tell you anything else, but I want protection first. He’ll kill me otherwise. If he even knew I was talking to you, he would kill me. Protection first, now! He’s doing something to my brain. Please, help me.”

“Why don’t you come in. We can talk about it.” The voice from the phone stated calmly.

“I don’t know how to get there.” And she wasn’t in the phone booth anymore. She clutched the unconnected phone as it began to repeat ‘we’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected’ again and again. She dropped the phone like it never existed like she never existed. Her heartbeat began to pace erratically as a figure approached through the dark.

As it moved forward it split into two, one in white and one in black. She rubbed her eyes fitfully, forgetting that moments ago she held a phone. The figures were her. The one in white wore a white latex nurse outfit while the one in black wore a catsuit, her eyes lined in thick coal. She pursed her black lips in a smirk. “Dva! We thought we’d find you here.”

“Where is here?” Dva swallowed fretfully. “I don’t feel very well.”

“Of course not, dear,” Nurse Dva stroked her head, “you’re not well.”

“You can say that again,” Catsuit Dva growled, “you’re almost rabid.”

“A legitimate mental breakdown,” Nurse Dva corrected. “I’m your Voice of Reason.”

“And I’m your Voice of Doubt,” Catsuit Dva flashed her sharp teeth, “And you are legitimately having a mental breakdown.”

Benthos leaned into the screen. His face twisted with confusion. “Kliger? These can’t possibly be your memories from this time period.”

Natalia twisted miserably in her chair and whimpered. She breathed heavily through her nose and struggled against her restraints. Benthos recognized he wouldn’t get any insight out of her in her current state. She was too lost in her relived memories.

“Controller, what are her readings?” Benthos asked the woman in the far corner, in charge of the aurora chair’s mechanisms.

“Sir, her cardiatric readouts are spiking. Her brain waves are oscillating outside of the allowed thresholds. She runs the risk of fissuring. Shall we abort?” The woman responded back succinctly.

Benthos tapped his chin, “No I don’t think so. She’s ignored whatever investment I had in her safety from the start. She’s insisted on showing us her whole life. Who am I to stop her,” he concluded with a small smirk.

Scorpius tensed in the Simulacrum and uncurled from his uncomfortable posture propped against the wall. As someone who was well acquainted with aurora chair session pitfalls, inconsistent readings and memories were reasons to abort. Yes, torture was to break a mind, but stumbling on an already broken one ran the risk of fissuring, the brain dying while the body lived. Natalia’s condition, nonresponsive and oscillating, was lining up with an impending fissure. Benthos was being riskily irresponsible no matter how difficult Natalia was at the start of this interrogation.

Scorpius reminded himself that this recording was already a day old. He was watching an event that already happened. Prevention was impossible. He could only watch and wait.

“He’s trying to kill me,” Dva fidgeted nervously from the chaise lounge, “I don’t know how, but time isn’t right anymore. It keeps skipping. There are so many versions of me at once. It’s getting really loud in my head.”

The psychologist sucked on his pen tip and focused sharply on her. Dva thought she recognized this man as her psychologist but she wasn’t sure for how long. She couldn’t remember a meeting before this. “What reason would your husband have to kill you?”

“I don’t know. He hates me. Or he’s obsessed with me? Threatened by me? Or maybe, he loves me so much...he wants to absorb me.” She was plucking pieces of her hair out and watching them fall with an intent focus. They puddled on the carpet, black against mellow blue.

“I’m going to write you a prescription for some mood stabilizers and antipsychotics. I’ll make sure your husband gets the order. It’ll take a while for them to settle you, but until then, we can keep meeting every week or more if necessary.”

Dva’s eyes flickered. She knew she’d never see the man again, but she stood up gracefully and took his hand, “Thank you, doctor…” She couldn’t remember his name nor how she got to his office or even how long they’d been speaking. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Dva. Just take your medicine. Listen to your husband, and try your best to stay calm.”

“You shouldn’t do that.” The Voice of Reason was back in her white latex nurse suit. She compressed a medical needle to remove the air pockets. A spurt of red liquid shot into the air from the needle's point. “I’d stop taking all medication if I were you. This is abnormal.”

“I would if I could remember taking any medication to begin with! How can I stop taking something I don’t remember starting to take,” Dva rasped. She was no longer in the therapist’s office. She was in a blank liminal space, whose ground seemed to be paved in little gold pills. They made her mouth water. She looked elsewhere.

“This isn’t the drugs.” The Voice of Doubt hung off her shoulders, drenched in body-clinging black rubber. “This is all you Dva. You’re a nut. You’ve cracked. You’ve murdered too many people in cold blood and your conscience is liquifying your brain bit by bit as penance. Enjoy the psychotropic effects. If you’re lucky you won’t end up locked in a straight jacket for the rest of your life, eating cold soup, and thrashing around like an imbecile.”

Dva twitched at this possibility. “But I know I was okay before.”

“You were. You were! Focus Dva. Focus on your real name.” Reason stroked her back.

“My name? Dva. It’s always been Dva,” Dva babbled to her two other versions.

Doubt rolled her eyes. “You’re such a half-wit. Were you ever a _full_ wit? Maybe this is what you’ve been running from your whole life, and it's finally caught up to you, _Dva._ Your inevitable insanity.”

“No!” Dva yanked her hair out in clumps. “I can’t be crazy. I need to pull myself together and be good at...I need to be good. I can be good… at something. I have a son! I need to be there for him.”

Dva surfaced like she was drowning into Dimitri’s lap. He was petting her hair. A book lay across her stomach. Dva recognized she was mid-conversation. She felt exhausted, almost too weak to move. 

“Dimitri? What are you doing to me?”

He continued stroking her hair. “Petting your lovely hair. Being nice. Is that so surprising? How are you feeling?”

“I’m not feeling very well.”

“Yes, you need help. I’ve been getting you help. See? You’re doing so much better. You’re calm, quiet, and relaxed. You listen better. You’ve almost become the ideal wife.” He glanced down at her with his golden eyes. Dva wanted to scream and never stop.

“Really? I only feel like it’s getting worse,” Dva muttered instead but she wasn’t lounging in his lap anymore. She was falling out of time again. 

There were more and more versions of her, breaking off like splinters in time. She was in a kaleidoscope. In each small window, she could view an aspect of her life spiraling around with glitter and light, but she wasn’t living it. Around and around her days went, but she was outside her body. Her mind kept duplicating at each fracture, jostling and crowding her own brain like a cancer. The conversations of her many selves building in cacophony until she couldn’t hear herself speak. Only to be temporarily slammed back into her body for a few seconds, before being swallowed whole again.

Dva flirted with a man at a bar.

Dva shot a man in the snow.

Dva cut herself while chopping carrots. 

Dva kissed her husband goodbye.

Dva watched him shoot a man. She liked the now dead man, but his blood was pooling on the floor, making her sick.

Dva read her son a bedtime story.

“I think I’ve figured out how to time travel,” Dva explained to one of her armed guards one evening. Her fingers were frail and boney now. She felt moments from death, but that was a sacrifice she had to make to control time. “I think I exist in multiple dimensions.”

“For fuck sake, Mrs. Nikolayev, take your fucking medicine.” The guard scoffed and walked away.

Dva didn’t remember taking any medicine. She cried into the embrace of Reason. “I’m going crazy and I can’t stop it! It’s so loud in here! Make everyone shut up!” She sobbed desperately and clutched at the nurse. Reason held her back, shushing her like Vasalisa had a lifetime ago. Was Vasalisa even real? “I’m going to die,” Dva concluded.

“You’re not going to die,” taunted Doubt. “Dimitri would never let you die without his permission.”

“This is all his fault!” Dva rasped into Reason.

“Yes, Dimitri’s done something to you,” she cooed. “But what are you going to do about it?”

Dva woke up in a pool of her own vomit. From the veil of ice and snow covering her and the half-frozen sludge of throwup, she recognized she’d been there for some time. It was too much trouble to move. She had no clue if she was even in her body anymore. Her limbs were leaden, weak and cold. If she tried hard enough, gave herself a nose bleed and a headache, she could remember really enjoying her warm, responsive, energetic physique. That time didn’t seem right. The only thing that felt real was this hysterical merry-go-round her life had become. 

Scorpius was getting increasingly worried. Benthos made no move to change course. The peacekeeper watched Natalia spiral out of control with a blase expression. Scorpius was positive even the controller was looking concerned as her readings were likely becoming more and more irregular. 

“Sir?” she peeped minutely, “Not to interrupt but…”

“Is she fissuring?” Benthos glanced back.

“Not yet sir, but…”

“Let me know if she’s fissuring.”

Dva labored to breathe in the snow. Natalia labored to breathe in the aurora chair. If this had been Scorpius's interrogation, he would've aborted.

“I want to die,” Dva whispered to Reason and Doubt as they hung over her.

“Tch. Dimitri won’t let you die,” Doubt restated.

“What if I killed myself?” Dva whimpered misty-eyed.

Reason tapped her chin. “You’d let Dimitri raise your son alone?”

Dva moaned. “No, no,” but then she giggled and the giggle became rolling fits of laughter, choking her, causing her to hack miserably into the snow. “What if I died and took my son with me? It can’t be any worse than this. He can’t stay here. It’s the perfect revenge.”

Reason and Doubt looked at each other, their mouths curled down in disgust before turning back to her.

“That’s a terrible idea,” they said in unison.

“No, it's brilliant! It’s brilliant!” Dva’s was stuttering in her laughter. She could barely breathe between the rolling fits of hilarity. “It's time to DISCO!”

And the kaleidoscope versions of herselves, bedecking her cavernous brain, froze in place for a second, a disco ball descended, and they began to dance.

Scorpius frowned deeply as the Simulacrum filled with an awful dance tune. The disco ball’s mirrored light patterned across him as it spun. The multiple versions of Natalia sprung to life and in unison partied like her memories were as vapid as what Scorpius imagined Studio 54 had been like.

_Ra ra Rasputin_

_Lover of the Russian queen_

_They put some poison into his wine_

_Ra ra Rasputin_

_Russia's greatest love machine_

_He drank it all and said, "I feel fine"_

The many versions of Dva continued to move in sequence to dance the Hustle. They twirled and clapped and smiled wildly.

“But I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just _kill_ Dimitri.” Reason figured as she was fading away like a ship into the fog, like one specific Dva in a sea of jiving Dvas.

_Ra ra Rasputin_

_Lover of the Russian queen_

_They didn't quit, they wanted his head_

_Ra ra Rasputin_

_Russia's greatest love machine_

_And so they shot him 'til he was dead_

At the end of the song, the mental party sank into darkness and disappeared. From the black appeared a frozen river. Windswept through with droughts of chilly mist. The perky music was replaced with the creak of ice as water flowed deep below. A small figure huddled near a hole in the ice.

Natalia in her chair keened painfully, but Benthos was riveted to the screen.

Her memories kept fading in and out on the tranquil scene of the frozen river with Dimitri, her son, hovering nervously over the open hole. The boy couldn’t have been more than four or five. His cheeks were red from the sharp chill and he was shivering.

The screen pulsed black.

When the river reappeared this time, Natalia, blue-lipped and white-skinned, gasped up through the ice hole. She dragged herself out despite her numbed fingers and frailty. Her dark eyes were dead and senseless. She clutched at her son.

“You know I love you. I love you so much. I can’t leave you here.” She was drenched, but she was past hypothermia. She didn’t shiver. Her skin was purple and white while her black hair surrounded her like a cloak. “It won’t hurt. We’ll go together. I promise it won’t hurt.”

“Mama!” the child wailed into her arms. “I’m scared! It’s cold. You’re so cold! Can’t we go home? I want to go home.”

The screen pulsed black.

Scorpius swallowed. Natalia was thrashing in the chair. “She’s fissuring.” He stated to no one but himself in the Simulacrum. There was nothing to do but watch while his pulse spiked uncomfortably with fear. Benthos watched on unaffected.

Natalia, despite being soaked and frozen, still managed to look even more tortured and miserable. She was moments from crying if she wasn’t already. Droplets froze in the corners of her eyes.

“Please understand. It’s better this way. We can go together,” She begged. “It’ll be okay.”

“No mama. No! I want to go home!” he balled and struggled feebly to get out of her clutches.

Natalia was visibly torn. A second passed before her eyes refilled with awareness, she balked. “Oh my god. What am I doing? I’m sorry!” She began to thumb away her son’s tears. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She babbled in panic. “Fuck! Fuck!” She tightened her child’s coat around him, glanced in multiple directions over the ice.

The screen pulsed black. 

“Sir. She’s fissuring!” The controller shouted. Scorpius snapped his teeth, helplessly, his spine taunt. He was moments from watching Natalia die for absolutely no reason he could understand. 

“Cut it.”

The dregs of the memory was Natalia stumbling through a snow-filled park. Clutching her son to her chest, she simply keeled over quietly, Her labored breathing slowly diminished to silence.

In the aurora chair, Natalia wasn’t breathing.


	13. Family Man: Part 3

# Family Man

## Part 3

Benthos lifted Natalia’s chin. The way his gloved fingers pinched it with clinical indifference made Scorpius fume. He wanted to wrench the hand away. He wanted to drag her from the chair, cradle her in his arms, and rouse her gently, if possible. This was a very scarran behavior. He’d done it before. The guarding impulse was a difficult one for him to resist. But unlike Scorpius and scarrans, peacekeepers didn’t have such a reflex. Instead, Benthos slapped her across the face. She moaned weakly.

Anger clawed through Scorpius. He growled at the recording of Benthos.

“That’s a very nasty memory you have, Miss Kliger,” Benthos muttered to her while he lifted her pale, sweat-damp face to the light.

“Don’t you touch her!” Scorpius snapped at the figment.

The recording cut out. The Simulacrum brightened and after a microt, Scorpius remembered he was shouting at a projection. He’d be embarrassed if he wasn’t swimming in barely contained rage and sweeping concern. He had a full solar day to wait before the next recording before he’d learn if Natalia was even alive and what then? Would the idiotic Benthos sacrifice her life to make a point? It was reprehensible.

He was already flying down the corridor toward the bridge. A frightened DRD squeaked and scuttled away as he blew past.

It would take some time, that was a given, but he could find out which command carrier Natalia was being kept. He still had influence with the Peacekeepers. He could request her transfer to his supervision. If she was well and able, he could complete her interrogation, but at this point, maybe she’d prefer a simple conversation. Scorpius certainly would.

The night-shift bridge crew startled alert as he entered. 

“Sir!” The Officer on Deck bowed sharply despite his surprise. 

Scorpius tried to curtail his temper, but based on the Officer’s expression, he was doing a poor job.

“Wormhole to PeaceKeeper Command One immediately. If this secondary crew is unable to make the necessary calculations, wake the person that can!”

“We are more than capable—.”

“Alert me when we’ve arrived.” He then turned on his heel and stalked back to his quarters.

If Natalia’s mind had fissured, he would never get to the cause of his wakeless nights, but this alone wasn’t keeping him aggressively pacing his chambers, stopping every so often to examine space outside his viewport. Suddenly, the spread of stars was washed away with the blue swirl of a wormhole’s walls. This marginally settled him. He would arrive at Command One shortly.

Meanwhile, Scorpius considered the ramifications that Dimitri was poisoning his wife into insanity. At this moment in time, Scorpius couldn’t trust the material Dimitri had shared with him in the Statu Sansu apartment. He had learned from Dimitri’s data chip that Natalia was once happy with him, with their family, but given the information gained from the aurora chair recordings, the data on the chip was a poor, incomplete summary. How could he blame Natalia for wanting to forget being drugged, _almost_ killing herself and her child? Her reluctance to share the details of her past with him wasn’t particularly condemning information to Scorpius now, in the appropriate light.

In fact, if Scorpius threw out these data points, he no longer had the adequate justification to end his cohabitation with Natalia and her daughter. Dimitri hadn’t given Scorpius proof of anything except perhaps a taste of Dimitri’s nature. Without these resources, what reasoning did Scorpius have that Natalia’s secrecy was aimed to harm him? Ultimately, he had nothing, and as Natalia’s remaining memories of Earth trickled through the _hourglass_ , it was beginning to appear she kept secrets because her Earth memories were incredibly painful. They actively hurt her.

Scorpius knew a few things about painful memories. Natalia herself was becoming a strange dull ache throbbing between his heart’s chambers. The dark cloud of anger that Scorpius had carried over the many months since her departure was dissipating. He didn't have the fuel to sustain it. He disliked that she kept her marriage hidden from him, but that was all that lingered. He himself had also kept things from her because it had been convenient and comfortable.

Outside his viewport, the waves of blue vanished and star-speckled space returned. Scorpius’s desk comm crackled. 

“Sir, we’ve arrived at Peacekeeper Command One.”

When Scorpius returned back to the bridge, he saw the enormous command carrier drifting at a distance in front of them. It was a massive vessel, nearly the size of a budong, and as the epicenter of Peacekeeper command and communication, it was expected. He issued a communique to the ship. The call beeped for several microns before it was answered.

“Frell, do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Is that really how you have chosen to greet me, Commandant?”

Meeklo Braca came on screen wearing regulation nightwear and sleep-muddled eyes. His hair was graying at the temples, but his appearance, for the most part, was unchanged since his time under Scorpius. However, his manners had changed quite a bit since his promotion. Scorpius supposed this was due to the fact that Braca now out-ranked him.

“Apologies, Scorpius.” But he hardly looked apologetic. “To what do I owe this call— Hold on, are you outside?” His voice became sharply strangled.

“Yes,” Scorpius warmly regarded his old friend and his familiar anxieties. “I need your help. I need the status and location of prisoner 829-HY63. I then need her transferred to me. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you, _Commandant_.”

Braca took a few microts to look up her information. His eyes flickering over the screen as he read. “Hmm, she’s alive, if that’s your concern, but another human, Scorpius? What is it with you and humans?”

Scorpius blinked slowly like a lizard but said nothing. However, his shoulders relaxed after hearing Natalia lived.

On-screen, Braca’s lip corners turned down.

“I can help you, but it will take some time for the proper clearances to pass and for the communication between Command One and the location she is being held.”

“But you can bypass that,” Scorpius purred almost sweetly.

“Yes, but within reason. This system runs on bureaucracy, Scorpius. I’m sure you remember it well. It chaffed you often enough,” Braca stood a little straighter as he considered the work before him. “But until then, you may wait in orbit. I will keep you posted.”

“Thank you, Commandant. I am in your debt.”

“It’s about time,” smirked Braca, “I’m getting tired of being your errand boy.” 

“I always thought you enjoyed that aspect of our relationship.” Scorpius simpered back.

Braca smiled wryly before the comm screen darkened.

Scorpius was pleased that his long-ago Lieutenant had done so well in the Peacekeeper ranks. Braca’s position also suited Scorpius’s often particular requests. The rest of the day arns were spent idly waiting and helping his aide draft an apology to Empress Novia for disappearing abruptly. In the afternoon, Scorpius was notified that Natalia’s latest recording was uploaded. Once he had her on his ship, there would be no more sitting passively on stand-by for new updates. He would feel incredibly relieved once this part of his life was over, regardless of the outcome. As he waited for the final say from Command One, he departed for the Simulacrum, for what he hoped would be the last time.

In the recorded projection Natalia had dark rings under her eyes. The rest of her face was pale and perspiring. Benthos smugly grinned at her.

“Ms. Kliger, I hope you realize this isn’t a game after yesterday’s experience. Are you willing to return to the original line of questioning?”

She observed him levely but didn’t have the energy to respond. 

On the screen, Natalia lay curled on a utilitarian bathroom floor. She was sweating profusely and holding herself while shivers wracked her emaciated body. A nurse draped a blanket over her.

“There, there. It’ll take some time, but eventually, you’ll feel better. Do you know where you are?”

Natalia struggled to shake her head.

“You’re in the psych ward. You tried to kill yourself.”

“My son?” Natalia croaked sadly.

“He’s alright, dear. But I’d like to talk about what you’re experiencing withdrawal from. Can you do that?”

Natalia nodded again. She pulled herself up to the toilet’s seat like it was a life preserver in a wild sea and she was already half-drowned.

“We found a lot of drugs in your system. You were taking a lot of prescription medications.” 

Natalia's face blanked. She had no recollection of doing these drugs. The nurse went on.

“But we also found a foreign compound. We’ve shared it with some specialists,” the nurse looked perplexed. “It’s the oddest thing. According to science, mmm, our science, human science? This compound shouldn’t exist. Do you know how you have an alien substance in your blood, Natalia?”

Natalia’s stomach churned and with a raking wave, she spewed into the toilet.

She stayed in the ward until her trial, not because she continued to go through withdrawal or episodes but because she could remain isolated, away from Dimitri. Throughout her time recovering, she thought mainly of her son who she had momentarily attempted to kill alongside herself. She rejected a lawyer for her trial; she didn’t plead insanity. Natalia admitted her guilt and was subsequently sentenced to twenty years in prison. It gave her time to think.

Despite her hopes for isolation and meditation, international agencies quickly honed in on the fact that a high-level black market weapons dealer was incarcerated. Natalia didn’t know how Dimitri got his galactic products, but she was a valuable treasure-trove for everything else illegal. Russian prison wasn’t a cake-walk either, and Natalia’s quiet meditation kept being interrupted with thoughts of revenge. Didn’t Dimitri deserve to be punished? 

When she was approached by Interpol in prison, she told the agents everything to get out on probation. She sang like a canary about every secret Dimitri told her, about every deal he had conducted, about every person he’d ever killed. But the agents wanted more. They wanted to know about his dealings with alien weapons, and Natalia was unfortunately ignorant. Regardless, Interpol cut her twenty-year sentence down to two, and she was spat out of prison.

Several months went by of Natalia constantly checking over her shoulder for a wisp of brown hair, golden eyes, or the particular spicy smell that made up Dimitri’s favorite cologne. Spotting a fine suit in the corner of her eye would send tremors down her spine and give her nightmares the following night. She shaved off all her hair. She hid in dark, smoke-filled bars, and she ran anytime she felt like she’d stayed anywhere too long. Sometimes she’d meet someone that almost made her want to stay longer. Someone who made her almost forget about her husband because she once again felt the most addicting drug of all; love. It was this flaw that eventually got her caught.

The bag was swiftly taken off her head, and her dark eyes flashed up at her captor. She thrashed against her zip-tie restraints holding her to the chair. “Dimitri!” She barked at him, “Dimitri! Fuck you!”

“Now now, sweetheart.” He thumbed the line of blood off her cheek. She flinched with her teeth-bared. “How many does that make?”

She continued to burn her glare into him.

“How many of your lovers have I killed? Three? When are you going to stop breaking my heart, Dva?”

Natalia didn’t remember the other two lovers. She must’ve taken them while she was being drugged. Sorrow swept through her. She couldn’t even remember the murders of men whose only sin was that they had been with her. She snarled at Dimitri and pulled at her restraints.

“You crazy, possessive bastard!”

“You’re mine, Dva. No matter how many of these back-water losers you sleep with. You and me are inseparable. We are one and the same.”

“I’m not like you. I’ve never been like you! You drugged me!” Her eyes wavered painfully. “I almost,” She bit the tip of her tongue and looked away, disgusted by herself.

“I didn’t think,” Dimitri’s voice faltered, “I didn’t think you’d try to kill yourself. I’m sorry.” His hand stroked her chin.

Natalia sunk her teeth into his hand. He cringed back and shoved his gun into her eye.

“Do it, Dimitri! Fucking do it! I don’t want to play this game with you anymore!” Natalia pressed against the barrel. “You’re a coward! You’d rather kill me slowly. Steal everything from me. Twist every ounce of good from me until it's dead and buried. You disgust me. I can’t believe I’m married to you!”

“Are you asking for a divorce?” He said with a touch of whimsy. He laughed at his own joke. “Would you like to see your son?”

Natalia desperately wanted to see her son but did not want her son to see her, smeared in another man’s blood, tied to a chair, and raving like a lunatic. Her clenched jaw loosened into a wobble. 

“Dimitri, come see your mother. She’s been missing you.” Dimitri called to the cracked door and a young boy slipped in quietly. His eyes were dark like his mother’s, but he was a miniature of his father. Once in the room, he gravitated to his father’s hip.

Natalia tensed to the point her bones might shatter.

“Don’t be scared, son.” He rubbed his hand down Dimitri II’s hair. “She wants to see you. It’s rude to keep her waiting.”

The boy nervously dawdled over.

“Hi, sweetie.” She tried her best to smile, but she burst into tears. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. How’s school? Are you being good?”

“Yes, mama.”

“Tell her you miss her,” Dimitri I chirped.

“I miss you, mama.”

“I miss you too,” she gurgled, “so, so much.”

“Give her a hug.”

Dimitri’s small arms encircled his mother’s neck. She was breaking in his timid embrace. Her tears were from both sweet joy and crippling sadness. With her arms tied to a chair, she was unable to return his hug.

“Alright, that’s enough.”

His arms withdrew. “Bye, mama.”

“Buh-bye,” Natalia was splintering into tears around her pained smile. “I love you. Please don’t forget that I love you.”

Dimitri collected his son’s hand. “Tell her you love her.”

“I love you too,” the boy murmured, eyes to the floor.

Her son was escorted out of the room while Natalia’s chest corroded away in misery. She sobbed into her lap until Dimitri returned. When she saw his perfect face again she erupted with all the emotions she couldn't show in the presence of her son. A fire burned in her black eyes.

“I’m going to kill you someday, Dimitri. I swear to fucking god!”

“And deprive our son a father as you almost did a mother?”

She couldn't come up with a comeback, instead, she settled with gritting her teeth. Natalia seethed with tears and venom.

“What of the rest of your family?”

“Emotional blackmail? How simplistic of you,” Natalia bit out.

He cracked his gun across her face, hard enough to knock out one of her canines, which spiraled away on the dirty floor. She tongued the gap when her wits recovered long enough to spit out the blood and feel the screaming nerve endings.

“Now, Dva, you ignored me for two years. For two fucking years I tried to see you in prison. Your son tried to see you. And now, you made me ruin your face with your pithy responses. You wonder why I drugged you?” He fished into his pocket and brought out a simple capsule. He squeezed the pill between his index finger and thumb. “The man, or whatever you want to call it, who sold me these said that they’d make the user delightful and docile to others. After some testing, I suppose they don’t work great on humans.”

Natalia sat ramrod straight. 

“Dimitri. Please no, ” she whined.

“But for a bit, you were so delightful and so willing to cooperate...” A malicious shadow fell over his eyes. Natalia knew what was coming even before he advanced forward. 

She sobbed at first, then screamed, and then shrieked. All the while kicking and struggling against her bonds until the leg on her chair broke. The guards had to help restrain her.

Dimitri’s hands forced the pill down into her throat. She choked against it, trying to regurgitate it out. Her jaw ached against the guards’ prying fingers. At last, Dimitri pulled his hand from her snapping, drool covered mouth.

“So this is how low we've sunk now,". Dimitri grimaced, “Look at what you made me do, Dva!? Pilling you like a slobbering bitch.” 

Natalia immediately felt dizzy, but it might have been from lack of air during her struggle. She realized she craved the pill. After seeing it real and in front of her, her mouth salivated. Insanity was easy for her. Perhaps this was what she experienced the first time she unknowingly swallowed the initial capsule years ago. Natalia couldn’t remember that original moment, of course. They had nasty side-effects, forgetfulness being one. She already felt more demure, panting softly into the carpet in her blood-speckled spittle.

Her bounds were cut off her limbs. She was lifted and moved to another room. The bed’s softness was reversed for Natalia’s mind. It’s cushions felt coarse. Dimitri lingered nearby. She was distantly afraid like her real personality was banging on soundproof glass telling her to wake up and run away. He kneeled down next to her, kneed her legs open. The removal of her belt was a sound that left a tactile impression on her skin. 

She blinked rapidly to uncloud her mind. It hurt a bit to struggle against the fog. She whined a sorrowful ‘no’, but Dimitri was pressing soft kisses to her scarred belly. They stung. His strong hands caressed under the fabric of her open fly and rolled over her pubic mound. Her stupid body produced a gasp. Natalia couldn’t panic. She wanted to, but nothing was responding properly. Instead, tears began to roll out of her eyes. She was utterly fatigued. Defeated, she looked away at the far wall.

Scorpius was staring back at her. He had passed into the hologram like a moth to a flame. The psychological punishment of horrors like this soothed some masochistic ache in his mind that he rarely indulged. It hurt. It burned to see Natalia like this. He couldn’t resist the pain it brought him.

In the recording, Natalia remembered the unbuckling of Dimitri’s pants. The lowering of his briefs over his erection. Even while drugged, she remembered his hands pushing up her shirt and bra to palm her breasts. He curled an arm under her back to lift her hips up to meet his. Her opening was resistant, so Dimitri spit on his hand and lubricated his cock with the saliva to ease his entry.

She clenched around the intrusion.

“So good,” Dimitri kissed into her neck. “But I miss your beautiful hair.”

It had been twenty-five cycles since Scorpius felt vengeful. Twenty-five cycles had passed since Scorpius had stopped the Scarran Peacekeeper war alongside John Crichton and the crew of the Leviathan Moya. To think, he had almost forgotten how _sweet_ that passionate swelling of hate was. It was delectable. He could practically taste the blood on his tongue already, or was that his own blood from having bit down too hard on his cheek meat? 

Dimitri pressed Natalia’s leg up and beat into her in smooth, long strokes. He rolled his hips up at the last moment to strike her spongy ridge with the tip of his member. She squirmed against him without conscious thought. Her brain was liquidating in exhaustion and tears, too emotionally taxed to even bother with hallucinations. She tried to phase the whole thing out like expelling a breath. If she could learn to pop away like the whole of that drugged year, this would be the ideal time.

But she was unable to harness forgetfulness, or as she once believed, time travel, at this precise moment. Dimitri wrapped his arms around her waist and pistoned into her. Natalia clenched again in resistance, overused and beaten. He groaned against her before sliding nimble fingers down her abdomen to grace her clit. She bucked dumbly against the building pressure. Then in a cascade of sensation, she finished around him. She hated him in a million ways. Even while her mind left her body, he knew how to make it sing like a traitor on the gallows.

“Can you speak?” Dimitri sighed against her.

“Cigarette.” Natalia rasped like an aging whore. It was how she felt anyway.

He plucked one from his silver case, plopped it between her lips, and lit the end. She smoked it with no hands.

“Two years, Dva. You know how to keep a man waiting.”

Natalia let the ash fall over her. “Dimitri,” she had to get the words out. Her brain was skipping like a record, “I deserve to know...about how. You. Get. Alien. Technology.”

“Do you deserve it?” Dimitri quipped, “Or for another reason? You sold me out, Natalia. How soon will Interpol come for me?”

“Soon enough,” she wetly gurgled.

He laughed at her.

“I love you, Dva. You are my blackest heart. For you, I’ll give anything.” And Dimitri told her his scheme, but Natalia sank into drug-induced dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the sweet relief of finishing this honker of a chapter. I'm so surprised some of you are still with me. Thank you <3


	14. Italian Girls: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _After their return to Moscow, Dimitri and Natalia get married and start a family. It is revealed to Natalia that Dimitri's family is involved with the Russian Mafia, and he specializes in selling black-market weapons. Natalia, therefore, joins them in their criminal activities. However, their marriage is far from perfect. Dimitri is a cruel husband, who belittles and confuses Natalia whenever he can. Eventually, for reasons Natalia can’t fully remember, she goes mad and attempts to kill herself and her son, Dimitri II. She is accused of attempted manslaughter and goes to prison, but upon release is recaptured by her husband. He admits he’s been secretly drugging her with an alien substance to make her docile before drugging her again! In her fragile state, he rapes her. Scorpius, watching all of this, pledges revenge. Meanwhile, Scorpius is in the process of freeing Natalia from the aurora chair's torture._

# Italian Girls

## Part 1

Natalia startled awake in the bed. Her eyes flashed open, only to wince at the bright morning sun streaming through the curtains. Dimitri had covered her with blankets, tucked her in like an exhausted child. On the edges of her vision, darkness wobbled. The remnants of the drug clawed at her. She couldn’t entirely believe she was alone. She sat up groggily, rubbing her head with a hand before glancing over. On the bed stand was a neat tray with a single shimmering pill on it. Her guts churned looking at it. Not in disgust, but that it’d be so easy to swallow and float out of her life.

She grabbed the pill frantically and darted into the bathroom. With a snarl, she chucked it into the toilet. It dissolved quickly during her panicked flushing. To her altered mind, it appeared to break apart as glitter.

With it gone, Natalia slumped against the toilet bowl, dry sobbing until she heard the door to her room crack open. She reeled in her cries immediately and silently stood to splay out against the wall near the bathroom door. The toilet flush must have alerted the guard outside that she was awake because a man wearing a suit with a pistol drawn entered the bathroom.

Barely considering her next actions, Natalia encircled his head with her arms and twisted. The massive man went slack in her embrace. She sank the dead man quietly down on the tiles and collected his handgun. It was loaded to her relief. Natalia stripped him of everything helpful, a knife and a bulletproof vest. She did up her boots quickly with calm attention to each eyehole. Then she left her bedroom.

She methodically killed every guard in the apartment, which was easily five armed men. Two she killed with her bare hands, the other three she killed with three precisely placed bullets. She took one hit to the chest, barely recoiling when the bullet lodged in her vest's metal filling. When the apartment was cleared, she made herself a cup of coffee and ate a piece of toast before cleaning the blood off her face. Like so many times in their marriage, Dimitri was gone, and to where, Natalia, for once, didn’t care. 

When her face was clear, she picked a car from the garage and drove to the National Central Bureau of Interpol. Everyone she encountered was genteel with her, but what reason would they have to be otherwise? She didn’t appear to be a woman capable of killing five men less than an hour ago. Her shaved head raised the eyebrows on the receptionist, but that was all. They settled her in a meeting room with floor to ceiling windows overlooking a courtyard. Tiny snowflakes flickered to the brown-gray ground outside.

After a brief wait, two men wearing nondescript suits entered. They had plain faces untouched by sun, classic Moscovite paleness. Their hair was as translucent as polar bear's.

“Mrs. Nikolayev,” Agent one, both were so nondescript, greeted her with a perfunctory head nod.

“I’ve brought you what you wanted.” Natalia didn’t get up from her seat. She was incredibly weary now that her heartbeat was settling after her escape.

“Took you long enough. We thought you had forgotten our deal. What do you have?” Agent one carried the same plastered-on, emotionless expression he always did. If they were happy about her intel, neither of them showed it.

Her lip curled over the fresh gap in her teeth. “Yes, you are very _patient_.” 

She fished a small recording device out of her pocket and flashed it to the Agents. One of them leaned forward to remove it from her hands. She pulled the black cylinder away.

“If you think I’m going to part with this before I see real, tangible paperwork, you’re as stupid as your aftershave.” Her exhaustion was clearly coming through in her inability to create sensical come-backs.

“Well,” Agent two soured, “we can’t give you any paperwork until we at least know you’re offering us evidence and not an indecent phone call with a _hotline_.”

Natalia was very close to clobbering him. She had already killed so many that looked like him that day, a few more barely added any weight to her conscience. Thankfully she had listened to her recording in the car ride over preemptively, preparing for these annoying agents. She hit play on the device.

“....I use a shrink ray,” Dimitri’s voice warbled clearly from the recording, “I have a few agents out in space. They bought their way onto a ship ages ago before all this colony vessel crap. They send me back...tiny items. Things so small you can fit them in your pocket, even if they are tanks or grenades or little pills.” 

Natalia clicked the recording off with a nasty smirk on her face. “Enough of a taste for you? Appetites wet?”

The Agents looked curiously at one another. Agent one whispered something inaudible to Agent two, who frowned and nodded discreetly.

“We can’t use a recording in court.” Agent one told her. His expression was every bit like a father scolding his child. It reminded Natalia of Dimitri. She hated them with a passion.

“That’s not my problem, is it? You wanted to know how he smuggled weapons here. You promised me a new identity and a one-way ticket out of this cesspool. Now are you going to give me what I’m owed or are you going to stand there like tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum?” she hissed.

Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum raised their collective eyebrows, but thankfully, spun on their heels and left the room with a decisive click to the conference room door.

In the aurora chair, Natalia mentally skipped through the paperwork. She was getting better at focusing through the specific pain of the chair. After so many interrogations, the machine was almost easy to wrangle. Especially after trundling into her memories of the year lost to her insanity.

Safe Journey was a beautiful ship. Natalia, who was born into tight quarters being a younger child of ten siblings felt right at home in her tiny cabin. The soviet block in Norilsk was similar to the modular systems on the aluminum tiled vessel. Adapting to the ship’s shift schedule was similar to working in the military. The year-long journey to the human colony would be a cakewalk. Her entire life had prepared her for this trip. Two months after being accepted into witness protection, living her new identity as Beth Goldberg, she was in the preflight medical examination.

The doctor was asking the normal questions, taking notes. Natalia was physically very healthy. Her period was always a bit unpredictable, so when the doctor asked for a pregnancy test, Natalia agreed offhandedly.

“Beth, you’re pregnant.”

Natalia stiffened.

“Oh?!” 

There was a slight possibility it wasn’t Dimitri’s, but a gut instinct told her the baby was his. This knowledge strangely didn’t unsettle her. Instead, it spiked with giddy greed. She rubbed her hand over her belly. 

“I’m keeping it.”

“That’s very exciting! Congratulations!” The doctor smiled, “Now, not to worry you, but there haven’t been many babies born in space before. We’ll have to keep a closer eye on you than normal for both your health and to record your development for the future. Safe Journey also isn’t the most equipped when it comes to prenatal medical I'm afraid. I don't want to discourage you from going through with the pregnancy, but you should be aware of the potential risks.”

“ _I’m keeping it_ ,” Natalia repeated firmer than before.

“That’s fine! That’s fine.” The doctor’s smile was more nervous this time. “How exciting. The future of mankind, right? It’s happening right in front of us. It’s an incredible time to be alive.”

“Yes. Yes, it is,” Natalia agreed softly while idly rubbing her flat stomach.

“Sir!” 

Natalia’s eyes swiveled to the Aurora chair chamber’s doorway. A nervous cadet in a basic Peacekeeper uniform scrambled over to Senior Officer Benthos.

“Sir! Pardon the disruption,” He saluted badly. 

Benthos clicked his boot heels together in annoyance.

“Speak! What is the meaning of this? Don’t you see I’m in the middle of an interrogation!”

“Yes sir, of course, I see that,” the cadet floundered, “But can we speak outside? I carry a message from Command One. It’s urgent and pertains to the prisoner.” His twitching eyes fluttered over to Natalia. Natalia blinked back. He jerked away.

Benthos wasn’t pleased. Natalia noted it in the sharp tension of his spine.

“Fine, cadet. But if this isn’t anything short of an emergency, I’ll see you punished for your lack of decorum. Turn the chair off.”

The controller nodded her head, and the torture device powered down. Natalia sank into the chair’s cushion. She was always surprised how rigid she became when the machine combed through her mind. When the aurora chair wound down, her muscles would holistically unclench. While exhausted, her eyes remained fixed on the door. She couldn’t possibly understand a reason for the cadet’s flustered and sudden appearance. Unless...

After a short absence, Officer Benthos re-entered without the cadet. He appeared mollified. His hard shoulders now bowed slightly. As he reached Natalia in the chair, he coughed into his fist.

“Ms. Kliger?”

“Yes, sir?”

He closed his eyes for a breath. To Natalia, it looked like he was struggling with a fit of exhaustion. When he opened them again, he was back to his normal frown.

“Could you please tell me why Scorpius has demanded your immediate release to his custody?”

She peered at him as if she couldn’t fully wrap her head around the entire statement he just uttered. 

“I’m sorry. He did what now?”

“Are you working for him?” Benthos queried.

Natalia tried to shake off her confusion. That was not who she thought might have caused this disruption. If anything, she expected Scorpius to stubbornly wait until the very end of her interrogation before _maybe_ considering he was in the wrong. He was that kind of man, after all, a thorough one. She couldn’t fault him for that. However, his intervention did mean her plan worked. Scorpius had seen her past, but why would he demand her release? To his custody nonetheless? She quelled whatever blooming hope she felt like blowing out a match.

“Is this still part of the interrogation, sir?” She stalled.

“Unfortunately, I am under direct order from Command One to no longer interrogate you. But since you have been very cavalier about your history, I was hoping you’d perhaps humor me. Why does Scorpius request your release?”

“It’s bold of you to assume I’d divulge that information,” Natalia snapped. She was delighted to feel this wave of fresh power. Benthos could do nothing to her now.

Benthos sighed but bent to undo her restraints. When her wrists were free, she excitedly rubbed them.

“But I suppose I will tell you. Might as well tell someone,” if she was lucky _maybe_ Scorpius was still listening, “I’m not working for Scorpius, but I suppose I am here because of him. I’d like to believe, for a time, we were in love,” Natalia confessed. 

Benthos’s hands stilled on her ankle straps. He barked a laugh. 

“Scorpius is considered to be in the top echelons of successful Peacekeeper conditioning, and Peacekeepers don’t _love_.”

Natalia frowned tightly at that. 

“Oh, so you know him so well personally, hmm? It’s a shame this interrogation was aborted then. The things you would’ve seen.” Her eyes blazed brightly with a wild glint. Perhaps that was why he called off her torture. He couldn’t risk being sexually exposed to his old _coworkers_. Natalia’s bright eyes settled. “But yes, I’m sure he was and is an excellent example of the Peacekeepers. They seem to be...unflappable folks.”

Her gaze drifted over Benthos, who straightened tightly. She stepped out of the chair with a firm clatter. While she was almost dead yesterday, the idea of Scorpius’s involvement almost rejuvenated her. Unless…

Unless he wanted to torture her instead. The exit door of the aurora chair’s chamber suddenly looked less freeing. Benthos was cruel, but in a distant, methodical way...a shunned lover, however, was always crueler.

“What do you know of Scarrans?” She turned on Benthos instead.

“We almost went to war with them. They are aggressive, prone to violence. They consider themselves a superior race and treat others like animals. Even after the treaty, they slithered away to their side of the galaxy and haven’t made much effort to improve public opinion. Vicious and diabolically devious is how most describe them.”

Natalia swallowed against a lump in her throat.

“Accept for freeing the Kalish,” she reminded herself before quipping sharply in a new line of thought, “but how do they feel about love?” 

She was absolutely stalling now. As soon as she left the aurora chamber, she would be one step closer to learning what Scorpius wanted from her.

“You expect a lot from big lizards,” he spoke loftily, “I doubt they even know the concept.”

Natalia tutted at him. 

“I’ve experienced worse from big apes.”

“Yes,” Benthos slid his eyes onto Natalia, “you sure can pick them.”

And that stung Natalia right to her core because Benthos wasn’t wrong. She was awful at love. It had caused her more pain, more strife, more hardship, and more insanity, than any other single aspect of her life. In short, what could she trust about her experiences with Scorpius? Whatever she felt was suspect and that was from experience. Life couldn’t be a fairy tale. There was no frog she could kiss to get a prince, and no knight in shining armor was riding in out of nowhere to save her.

“Better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all,” she sighed to Benthos as she left the Aurora Chair’s chamber. She had to get back to Andromeda. Hopefully whatever Scorpius wanted from her wouldn’t prevent her access to her child.

She returned to her cell, but without handcuffs, and as she waited, she paced. While she wanted Scorpius’s understanding, she hadn’t forgiven him for siding with her husband. It turned her stomach to remember. The time they spent together meant nothing. He was almost eager to throw her out, to accept Dimitri’s highly manicured stories. She couldn’t dwell on these thoughts. It was making her ill.

Natalia would rather consider what motivated him to come get her. If he was watching her torture, if he was watching her past, what moment could have changed his mind? Was it because she almost died? When she had woken up in the Command Carrier’s medical ward, the nurse explained how close she came to becoming brain dead. Perhaps Scorpius didn’t want to witness her death. She could understand that. They left each other on bad terms, but that didn’t mean she was willing to watch harm come to him. Hopefully, he wasn’t willing to watch harm come to her. She hoped that was the reason.

Still, after what he witnessed, her unforgivable mistakes, what other reason could he have if not to torture her, to punish her further? She tried to shake off her unease. There was no turning back, time crawled on, and she could either stew in anxiety or she could greet whatever was coming with courage. She put those fears to rest for now.

On the other hand, her own feelings were in shambles. Did she forgive Scorpius? Natalia wasn’t sure. She supposed it would be dependent on what came next. She fettered away the time in her cell cycling through her concerned thoughts.

Eventually, the guards retrieved her and walked her into a docking bay where a single transport ship was idling with its gangway down. As she approached, Scorpius appeared in the doorway.

He glided over to her. His lip twitched when he scanned her from toes to face. “Natalia.”

“Scorpius. You got my message.” Natalia attempted to match his cadence. 

“It was impossible to ignore, but I’m sure you're tired of this command carrier and their _hospitality_. Come.” 

He then circled her wrist with his hand and escorted her onto the transport ship.

Once they were on board and the door slid into place, Scorpius inspected her properly, circling her like a satellite, only to finally caress the edge of her jaw with his hand.

“You’re not upset at me?” she murmured into his palm. Her pulse was hammering while preparing for a sudden blow or a chastisement.

Instead, a smile peeled at the corner of his mouth. He pinched her chin and tilted her mouth down to his. Natalia jerked in surprise but parted her mouth to his coaxing. He wasn’t as warm as she remembered, but then again they’d never kissed like this before. She had no basis for comparison. Natalia laid her hands over his breastplate and breathed into him. When he started to use tongue, she pulled back, startled.

“Wow. Hello to you too.” Natalia could feel her face burning with a blush. To hide her redness, she ran her hands through her hair to smooth the flyaways down.

“It’s been a long time,” the corner of his mouth still twitched like he was smothering a smile.

“I can’t believe you’re here. I didn’t think you would come. It’s nice but... unexpected.” Natalia decided to put some distance between them. She was still on uneven ground, but she didn’t want to fall into bed with him immediately no matter how much she had missed him.

“How did you expect to get out of Peacekeeper custody then?”

“I paid some mercenaries.” She smirked wryly, “I should probably tell them to abort. I’d like to do that when we are underway, but out of the Command Carrier’s comm range, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, of course.” He went to sit in the pilot seat.

Natalia tilted her head. 

“You’re piloting? Where’s your aide?” She looked around the small transport ship again. It was a bit dingy. It almost appeared _rented_.

Scorpius navigated out of the hangar.

“I wanted our reunion to be private.” He scanned her quickly again.

Natalia’s head tilted sharper. 

“Oh?”

“Natalia,” he shook his head amused, “Natalia, yes, private. We have a lot to talk about, don’t we? Do you really want others around for that?”

She narrowed her eyes at Scorpius. The moments stretched in silence.

“Dimitri. Let him go.”

There was another long pause. Scorpius acted like she hadn’t spoken, he went about guiding the ship further into space.

“Dimitri!” she hissed, “get the fuck out of Scorpius.”

Scorpius tsked her. 

“Now is that any way to make requests? You’ve learned nothing if you think I will ever listen to you if you speak to me like that.”

Natalia threw herself into the back of the ship. It was a small transport. She scrambled through every compartment in milliseconds. There wasn’t anything to defend herself with.

Scorpius had risen from his seat. The viewport had open space behind him. He sauntered toward her as she backed away. There was nowhere to go and Scorpius braced two arms against the wall, pinning her. She hissed at him, her eyes welling with fear.

“Dva. My sweet number two. What’s the matter? Don’t want to hurt your latest slum fuck?” Scorpius stroked her cheek. She jerked away and spit in his face. He laughed while wiping her dribble away. Then he backhanded her. “Manners!”

She rolled away from him and stepped into a fighting stance. 

“Dimitri, I’m warning you. Get out of him. I won’t hold back. He’d understand.”

“Warning me? Warning me! Oh, would he?” Scorpius laughed. It was an eerie sound. Natalia had thought he physically couldn’t. “I don’t think you understand him very well at all. I think I might understand him better.” 

His eyes narrowed at her.

“I’ll have to beat you out of him then!” Natalia lashed out and cracked her fist squarely in his face. She followed with a jab. Scorpius’s spit trailed as he spiraled into the transport’s console.

She slammed her ankle down with such force, the console’s shell cracked, but he had already hurried away from her blow. Scorpius tackled her in the mid-section but as she rolled, she leveraged her legs and launched him into the transport’s back compartment. Light fixtures shattered and sparked as he barrelled into them.

She’d fought Scorpius before. She’d fought Dimitri too many times to count. This fight didn’t seem like either of them. Perhaps Dimitri was disoriented piloting a body that wasn’t his, but there was something else, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Scorpius vaulted to standing and threw a punch that she blocked. She curled around his arm and twisted his elbow to its extremes. Instead of bones snapping in skin, there was a popping sound like opening a can of beer. Natalia quirked an eyebrow. He slammed into her again with his other hand.

That was it! This Scorpius had the wrong weight, the wrong density! He was made of something else, but he looked like the spitting image of Scorpius. She scrambled in the broken debris and dragged out a light fixture shard.

“What are you going to do with that Dva? You won’t kill me.” Scorpius teased.

“Shows how little you know!” Natalia buried the shiv in his gut. When she plunged it back, blood didn’t pour out of the wound. Instead, a tangle of shivering clear tubes ruptured outward like she ripped a hole in a wired, pressurized machine.

The thing that wasn’t Scorpius didn’t even act wounded. Instead, it stood like she’d ruined a great surprise at a child's birthday party. He had the audacity to clap. “Bravo! Bravo! You bitch.”

But she snarled at him and buried the glass shard into multiple places on his torso. The last stab held so much force, they both toppled over. Scorpius’s doppelganger fell into the compartment storage, dislodging drawers into a pile. Natalia held the makeshift blade to his throat.

“Anything else you want to say to me, Dimitri? Before I sever your head.”

“Yes, a question. What do you really see in this guy, Dva? He can’t love you like I love you.”

Natalia didn’t hesitate. “He’s better than you in every single way. Oh and Dimitri—?”

The Scorpius double was battered. Whatever it was made of was now scuffed and torn. However, its eyes were uncomfortably familiar. It had the focus of an intrigued and listening Scorpius.

“He loved me better.” 


	15. Italian Girls: Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Thanks to whoever shared this story and gave me 50+ hits over the course of a Tuesday night! I didn't think there were more than ten people in the world that gave a shit about this premise. Regardless, my precious readers, thank you for taking this ride with me. I'm writing a novel. Did you know you're reading a novel?

# Italian Girls

## Part 2

Scorpius smirked dryly when Benthos was pulled out of the room by a simpering cadet. He didn’t expect the recording to capture when his request arrived at the Command Carrier. It meant that arns ago, Natalia was freed, but with the communication delay and classic Peacekeeper government, there were still a few more forms left to process.

When Benthos returned, Scorpius noted the Senior Officer was significantly less arrogant in his address. Scorpius hoped later he would be properly debased by his superior for negligence to his prisoner. Still, Scorpius listened intently. 

_ “Unfortunately, I am under direct order from Command One to no longer interrogate you. But since you have been very cavalier about your history, I was hoping you’d perhaps humor me. Why does Scorpius request your release?” _

_ “It’s bold of you to assume I’d divulge that information,” replied Natalia. _

There was a brief pause. Scorpius reveled in her tone and at Benthos’s submissive sigh in response. However, like Benthos, he too was curious about what she might say.

_ “But I suppose I will tell you. Might as well tell someone.” _

Scorpius smirked sharply again in even-greater satisfaction. Natalia always aimed to please.

_ “I’m not working for Scorpius, but I suppose I am here because of him. I’d like to believe, for a time, we were in love.” _

In love? Scorpius choked on his own breath. In love??? And while the recording continued on, his mind sputtered on this one statement and didn’t recover until the comm in the Simulacrum chirped.

“Sir, we’re being hailed by Command One.”

Scorpius realized he was standing stiffly in the bright light of the completed Simulacrum and that he’d missed the rest of Natalia’s last recording. He coughed to dislodge whatever was stuck in his throat. In love?

As he made his way back down the corridor to the bridge in an unfamiliar daze, he attempted to wrestle his higher brain functioning back. It was absurd. Over the past three cycles at some point, she reached a threshold where she  _ loved _ him and he had missed it?

He entered the bridge and hailed Braca.

“You have news?” he kept his voice as level as possible.

Braca, on-screen, scanned over Scorpius, and his eyebrow quirked. Scorpius schooled whatever expression he was wearing to a patented scowl. Braca cleared his throat instead of asking what internal struggle he was grappling with. Scorpius was indefinitely thankful.

“Yes, your request has been granted. Prisoner 829-HY63 is located in the Epiloda system.” The navigational console pinged jovially with Natalia’s location. “The suspension of her torture under Officer Benthos has been effectuated. Upon arrival, they will transfer the prisoner over to your custody. Is that all?”

Scorpius was still gnawing at the sheer audacity of the idea,  _ love _ . He almost grunted his approval but caught himself. 

“Yes, that is all, Commandant. You’ve been a tremendous help as always. I hope to see you again soon.”

Braca’s expression became sharper as Scorpius spoke. There must be something off in his voice, but Braca had learned not to press Scorpius for explanations. 

“Yes well, next time you owe me a favor, so I’ll be calling on you instead.”

Scorpius nodded but as soon as the monitor darkened, he felt a foreign excitement fill him. 

“Get underway to that location as quickly as possible. Once we arrive, hail the command carrier’s captain before you alert me of our arrival. I want him onscreen and prepping the prisoner even as I return to the bridge.” 

He briskly exited the bridge hoping to avoid causing a disturbance with his uncommon exuberance.

In his chambers, the stars outside glimmered richly. Watching them sparkle, it was like he felt them internally. She was in love with him. She thought he was in love with her, that her feelings were met and mutual. How had he failed to see it?

He scrolled through his alternative memories of Natalia, the things he’d left out of his log trying to discover the cause for his sleepless nights. These moments in time he considered now hadn’t suited the narrative he was attempting to explain less than a few nights ago, so he’d left them out.

Beyond his log there was also another Natalia, not the secretive woman waiting for the perfect moment to betray him, but a woman who would draw him to the couch, settle down against him, and read aloud her human stories so that he could listen. The Natalia who would sing in the morning while watering the plants in the kitchen and would smile at Scorpius as he emerged from his quarters. Sometimes she’d sing the same songs to him instead. Or the Natalia who would wake up in the same moment as he but would nuzzle against his shoulder praising his warmth and wishing to return to sleep. 

There was a singular moment he remembered. When unlike all the other times he met her eyes with his own, and in this one moment, Natalia’s eyes sparkled like the stars outside. Ever since then, she always looked at him in this way. He warmed gently when she regarded him like that, unlike the painful burning sensation of his genetic disorder or the flush of lust. Even now, he heated thinking about it. She only lost that glimmer when she thought about her past, when she thought about Dimitri or when Scorpius weaponized her secrets against her and chased her away…

The wall of the wormhole appeared beyond his viewport. In the swirling, almost-oceanic tunnel, he could see himself mirrored. There was something unfamiliar in his expression, like a dread that haunted his eyes or his downturned mouth. In the liquid ripples, for a microt, he almost appeared purely-sebacean, but when he blinked, the trick-to-the-eyes was gone.

Natalia said she thought they were in love, but that was past-tense. To her, they weren’t in love any longer. His eyes dropped from the window. 

But she must still care about him in some capacity. She submitted herself to the aurora chair for him to learn about her past. Were all humans this psychotic about love? His emotions were swinging like a pendulum lately. In the last microts, he had moved from joy to sadness to optimism. Now considering her submission to the Peacekeepers and her own admission she did it for him alone, he felt privileged. This was the boldest romantic gesture he’d ever received. To think, lovers gave paltry bouquets of dying flowers and he was offered Natalia’s entire history even at the threat of her life. It was astonishing. He was beyond moved.

He wanted Natalia here now. The waiting was becoming intolerable. The passing of time slowly dug its nails into the soft flesh above a sensitive pressure point. He craved the ability to press her lovely curves to his torso and lick that spot under her chin until she melted against him. Perhaps he could convince her to love him again. If he apologized, if she accepted, and together, they found the despicable creature that was her husband and beheaded him.

Scorpius shook his head and snorted. This was exactly why people in love were insufferable. But the idea held some appeal. Demetri needed to die, but it wasn’t up to him to simply find the man and kill him. This was Natalia’s revenge. She should be central to its execution.

The wormhole’s wall diminished to stars again, and Scorpius was already out his quarter’s door even before the comm alerted him.

However, when he arrived on the bridge, the command carrier’s captain was not on-screen like he had requested. Scorpius was already scowling deeply that his command was neglected when his captain stepped in.

“We hailed the command carrier’s captain, but he hasn’t accepted it yet.”

“Hasn’t accepted it yet?” Scorpius reiterated sourly.

“No sir.” The captain said a bit helplessly. “We’ve been pinging him every twenty microts.”

“Hmm,” Scorpius’s expression tightened, “keep trying then.”

While at first Scorpius had entered the bridge barely containing his excitement, the wait had cooled his exuberance to an irritated buzz. Eventually, the captain they were waiting for blinked on screen, looking slick with sweat.

“It’s about time,” Scorpius snapped. “Did you mean to keep me waiting until the evening shift?”

“Sir, please allow me to express my sincerest respect for you and your request.” The captain gulped as nervous concern crossed his face.

“Enough. Release the prisoner immediately and permit one of my transport carriers to remove her.”

“Sir. The thing is... There must be some mistake. We released her to you already.” The captain winced.

For a single microt, Scorpius’s eyes widened.

“You what?” Scorpius growled in a threatening decibel.

“Not three arns ago, you arrived in a transport,” the man stammered, “and collected the prisoner yourself.”

“I did no such thing,” Scorpius snapped. “I demand you send me all the information you have on this impostor immediately.” He cut the communication and launched from the chair he was previously lounging in before departing the bridge abruptly.

Dimitri. It had to be Dimitri. Scorpius bit his tongue. Dimitri had made a bioloid of him. The human had been in Scorpius’s home. In those sixty microts of unobserved exploration, he had managed to pilfer Scorpius’s DNA. That was the only explanation, which meant that Dimitri had Natalia. Scorpius snarled as he rushed back to his quarters.

As soon as the door shut, Scorpius howled a guttural yell and cleared a counter of personal items he’d meticulously collected. The ones that were fragile shattered on the ground in pieces that could never be reassembled. He flipped his desk, dislodging the electrical cables that sparked as the tethers tore. Dimitri had Natalia and was likely drugging her or worse, raping her in her vulnerable state. Scorpius struggled to settle his breathing. His outrage would fix nothing. It stung painfully to collect himself. He gripped the sill of the viewport and sank to the floor, forcing back his temper. Swallowing his wrath wasn’t simple but he had enough past experience.

He stayed motionless for some time, slowly centering himself in his thoughts. How did Dimitri capture Natalia? He must be better connected than Scorpius thought. His ability to make bioloids and his sebacean appearance likely helped his infiltration. Scorpius steadied himself as he stood. He quietly righted his desk and connected the sparking wires to reform the connection. It was an incomplete fix, but his console's boot menu shone brightly in between bouts of fizzling static.

...Commandant Braca, I believe the Peacekeepers have a bioloid spy that has high enough clearance to access appropriate databases to locate prisoners. I suggest performing a full scan for this interloper. Be warned. He is a skilled manipulator.

Scorpius sent the communique with a muscle-taunt briskness. He was still reeling in his temper, but sending this message slightly soothed his need to be productive. 

“Tsk. Do you always ruin everyone’s fun?”

The voice was  _ small _ and came from somewhere in the room. Scorpius stopped his breathing like hitting the brake abruptly on a vehicle. He stood motionless as his eyes scanned each dench of space throughout his quarters. There was nothing out of place except for the things he’d recently destroyed. Their remnants splayed out across the dark tile.

“Yes…?” Scorpius queried to the empty air. He had to keep the voice talking.

“Hmm, can’t find me, can you? I’m disappointed. I expected this  _ legend _ of a man and instead I got you, a guy that throws a tantrum as soon as the chips are down.”

It was Dimitri’s irritating voice, but it was clearer than if spoken over a comm and very close.

“Right shoulder,” Dimitri quipped.

Scorpius’s eyes snapped over and his pupils widened on a pristine, miniature Dimitri lounging on his right pauldron. The man was no taller than a dench, wearing a perfectly pressed suit, and smiling. He sat on one of the black spiky scales that ran the length of his armor.

Although shocked, Scorpius remained absolutely still. He resisted the childish urge to strike out and crush the literal  _ bug _ on his shoulder.

“Why reveal yourself now?” Scorpius seethed.

Dimitri smiled churlishly.

“Because I’m winning? I hate to tell you this, but I’m always winning. You and I have unfinished business, and I don’t like leaving loose threads.”

“You want to meet? Your offer is clearly a trap,” Scorpius seethed.

Dimitri laughed. 

“What other options do you have? Don’t you want Natalia?”

Scorpius’s eyes narrowed but he bit back his snarl. Dimitri had likely left this small version of himself in the apartment as well, which meant Scorpius had been spied on for the last eighty solar days. The very idea that Dimitri had insight into his emotions unnerved and disgusted him.

“That’s what I thought,” Dimitri had the nerve to inspect his nail cuticles as if Scorpius and their conversation were secondary to his beauty routine. “Take me to the bridge, and I’ll lead you to her.”

“No,” Scorpius hissed, “this is a game to you, and I opt out of playing.”

The tiny Dimitri grimaced, showing his teeth.

“You can’t be serious.” 

But Scorpius suddenly swatted his shoulder. Dimitri lost his footing and tumbled down his mantle only to catch himself on the edge of the pauldron somewhere along Scorpius’s shoulder blade. Scorpius twisted around trying to reach but unable to, slammed his back into the nearest wall. He waited a microt to see if that silenced Dimitri, but he was disappointed.

“Alright,” Dimitri shouted from an unknown location, “I have to hand it to you. Didn’t expect you to do that, but you probably didn’t expect me to do this either.”

Dimitri resized to his full height and slammed his fist into Scorpius’s jaw. Scorpius snatched out his hand despite his surprise but caught air. Dimitri was already bolting for the door.

Scorpius snarled, but didn’t pursue immediately. He hastily put a call into security from his glitching desk console that an imposter was onboard. Scorpius had a good idea where Dimitri was headed. He stalked into the corridor and headed back to the bridge. He could easily handle this single bioloid, even one as bothersome and vile as Dimitri. If anything, his current mood was ideal for fighting this facsimile of Natalia’s husband. An emergency always settled his nerves.

As he approached the bridge, his security team was fortifying outside the door.

“He took the bridge?” Scorpius raised an eyebrow at his staff. He was dissatisfied that they hadn’t been able to respond as quickly as he had thought.

“He is armed and has three women with him, sir. They’ve taken the pilot hostage.”

“Three women?” Scorpius didn’t wait for a confirmation, “I have a plan. Do exactly as I say.”

Dimitri apparently didn’t want to kill him, at least not yet. Instead, Dimitri wanted to trap him, but for what purpose? These thoughts were running through Scorpius’s mind as he opened the bridge’s door and stepped inside.

“Ah, so glad you could join us. We’re underway.” Dimitri stood in the navigational basin with a blaster pressed against the pilot’s neck. 

He barely glanced up to the doorway before Scorpius was barraged with an attack. There was time to block the first fist that flew toward his face from the right, but another struck him on the left. Two sets of hands, caught him by the breastplate and lifted him off the ground along the wall. 

Scorpius was brought face to face with three Natalias. Each one a different image of her past. There was a Natalia with long hair and a diamond necklace to his right; IDF Natalia, sun-tanned to his left, and finally, the Natalia from the photo of Dimitri and her son who stood off to the side with a blaster pointed at his temple. 

“How about you take a seat?” Dimitri cooed. 

The three Natalias carried Scorpius down into the basin. They pushed him into a nearby chair, but only the gun-toting Natalia remained at his side. She rested the blaster point on his neck guard. The other two went and draped around Dimitri. He pulled one close and kissed her roughly. Despite being an android, she appeared memorably misty-eyed. 

Scorpius shuffled upright and nodded to the nervous Relgarian pilot, who was anxiously following a blinking dot on her screen.

“What is the purpose of this, Dimitri? If you want Natalia, she’s obviously yours to have. I can’t see what this has to do with me,” Scorpius stated placidly.

“Clever boy, but I see through your charade. Remember, I witnessed you destroy your room less than five microns ago because you realized I got to her first. Be honest, you hate me.”

“Hate is too strong a word for an irritant, an insect.”

“Hmm, the feeling is mutual. You remind me of the creature from the black lagoon attempting to drag my wife down into the swamp. She’s far too perfect for me to allow that. I mean look at her.” Dimitri slapped the ass of the Natalia pressed against his chest, and gripped it meatily. Natalia squeaked. 

Scorpius despised this prattle. 

“I suppose you prefer dolls to the real thing. They don’t bite.”

Dimitri’s face pinched. 

“Only if I ask,” he snapped piecemeal, “I could have been nice and gotten  _ these dolls _ to give you a parting gift. Bet you like handouts.”

“Ew, no Dimitri!” The Natalia in his grip whined in a strange accent. “He’s disgusting. I hate him.”

The other bioloid Natalia parroted her protest with the same voice.

Scorpius’s lip curled. Dimitri had altered the bioloids to have a different voice than the real Natalia. Unlike her hushed, smokey cadence, these organic automatons spoke with an audible bounce. 

Dimitri thumbed Natalia’s lip. She licked it affectionately.

“Isn’t Italian beautiful? Translator microbes are practical, yes, but they really take away the grace and beauty of a foreign language.”

Scorpius scowled deeply and wheezed a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.

“You simply can’t appreciate anything can you?” Dimitri jostled the blaster at the navigator, “Ah-ah-ah, keep on course. I can see that indicator and we’re going to it.”

“How do you think this will end Dimitri?” Scorpius finally queried, “Is your goal to collect Natalia, drug her mentally into oblivion or death, and then what?”

“There is nothing more precious than the emotions I create in that woman. They are stronger than anything. To hold something precious is to hold it tightly. This ongoing fight I have with her I cherish above everything.”

“What incredibly droll nonsense.” Scorpius disliked him immensely, but he couldn’t help smirking dryly while baiting him. 

The Natalia at his side slapped his temple with the barrel of her blaster. Scorpius winced.

“You know what I don’t understand. Where do you fucks get off sleeping with another man’s wife? She doesn’t belong to you. Everything you’re benefiting from is due to another man’s labor. Mine. You like how she fucks? I taught her that. How she behaves? Smiles? Me. You’re a leech. It’s disgusting, and at the end of this, you’ll die.”

“I think not,” Scorpius simpered smugly, “your face is degrading.”

“My face?” Dimitri reached up to touch his skin, but he penetrated through the now puddy-like goo into the framework that made up his internal mechanism. He jerked to look at the Natalia he held in his arms, but she was already liquifying into twitching tubes.

His knees corroded away quickly, turning to gelatin and weak cartilage. He shot the pilot clumsily as his fingers melted. The Natalia that held the blaster to Scorpius’s temple, had also begun corroding but it began at her fingers. The blaster fell into his lap before she had a chance to fire. Scorpius scrapped the sludge from his armor, stood up, and hung over Dimitri’s pooling form.

“Bioloid circuitry and construction are sensitive to a completely different range of poison than Scarrans and Relgarians. It’s fortunate that this vessel’s recycling system uses some of these chemicals as a coolant and can easily become an aerosol.”

The puddles at Scorpius’s feet couldn’t respond. Dimitri was finally silenced. With that problem neutralized, Scorpius turned tightly on the pilot. She was holding her wounded shoulder.

“You need medical attention,” Scorpius commented succinctly.

“Thank you for saving me, sir.” Her eyes were moist with relief. “Yes, I’ll get to the med bay right away.”

“Before you go, tell everything the imposter told you to your secondary. I want this vessel to continue unheeded to his desired destination.”

The pilot startled back into her professionalism. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”


	16. Guessing Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Did you read Far Horizon? More specifically, did you read Far Horizon's Epilogue? That Epilogue happens in this chapter! (Wow, yes, I know, I'm a wizard.) If you haven't read Far Horizon or the Epilogue, or you simply want a refresher of what happened way back in, oh say, April... [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22354390/chapters/57193993) is the link.

# Guessing Games

The secondary pilot followed the tracking beacon to a small asteroid city called Epiloda-12. There were several cities speckling Epiloda’s asteroid belt, and as the asteroids’ numbers increased, the cities became less and less habitable. While Epiloda-0 was a garden utopia, Epiloda-30 was a reservation for the original inhabitants of the system’s now-destroyed planet. Epiloda-12 was plagued with corruption, but at least it had an atmospheric dome. It was a good place to disappear forever.

Scorpius descended to the asteroid with a small detail of security. His security officer tracked the beacon to an unused and forgotten shipping pier. An invasive slime mold was branching like capillaries in the ancient pavement. It pulsed softly in fluorescent yellow at each footfall. The beacon led them to a basic transport vessel, poorly parked. Its wing was half-buried in the cement, and already the slime mold was starting to claim it. Scorpius’s security officer, armed with a blaster, disappeared into the open hatch but reappeared moments later.

“Sir, you’re going to want to see this.”

Inside, among the rubble, was a beheaded Scorpius bioloid. The signs of a fight were evident everywhere. Scorpius moved across the broken glass to inspect his lifeless head. White tubes shivered out of the base of its neck. Scorpius could only imagine how this duplicant might have shocked Natalia, but where was she now? In a large inhale, he could smell the remnants of her blood and sweat. Despite the encroaching mold outside, her arrival here and her departure from the transport was recent. Scorpius thought for a moment.

“How many transit hubs are there on this asteroid?” He asked his security officer, who checked his tablet.

“There is only one, sir. It’s not far from here.”

Epiloda-12’s depot was surging with passengers. The entry doors fed into a poorly-lite, claustrophobic tunnel carved into the asteroid's bedrock. The stone ceiling was heavy and threaded with industrial tubing. It was so crowded and narrow, Scorpius could see only one or two rows of creatures in front of him.

Due to Epiloda-12’s broad orbit, it only received natural light every twelve cycles. There was no reason to build a depot with windows. Only before the gate turnstiles did the oppressive ceiling rise away from the heads of the crowd in some semblance of a welcome hall. On the marquee, alien languages scrolled languidly by in orange alerting passengers or greeters of arrival and departure times. Around the floor were three fires for delayed or waiting people to warm their chilled hands. 

It would be particularly difficult to find someone in this crowd and dimness. There wasn’t even an elevated staircase or platform to scan for a familiar face. Scorpius commanded the security detail to split up, and comm if any sign of Natalia was found.

Alone on the entry floor, Scorpius scanned through the departures hoping for some clue of her next destination. If they lost her now, he would have to reside himself to his incomplete picture of the woman’s past and perhaps never sleep again. He hadn’t yet tried to sleep after her latest revelations from the aurora chair, so perhaps his active mind was finally satiated.

She might have been in love with him at some point in the last three cycles, but what bearing did that have on him? It had none, obviously. Her emotional attachment, or her once emotional attachment, was irrelevant. Scanning over the heads of passengers, he concluded that if he lost her here, he would not pursue her across the Uncharted. For what point and purpose would that serve him? He had no reason to do so.

He heard a small click immediately before a blunt object was jabbed into his armpit.

“How do I know it’s really you?”

“Ah, Natalia, a good question. I saw what you did to that bioloid.”

“Answer the question!” she hissed into his jawline. 

Scorpius realized the cool cylinder pressed against his axillary artery was likely her Makarov pistol. It fit the size profile. 

“My favorite human book is Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” he answered quietly. 

Even though the transit hub was cold, he was warming against her. A small smile tugged at the edges of his mouth already. He felt infinitely pleased to be returned to her close presence. Odd to say the least. 

Natalia snorted against him. 

“I still can’t believe that.” The barrel of her gun withdrew and Scorpius turned to see her.

Natalia had dyed her short hair acid green in the last few arns since her recording, but her face remained drawn and weary. Her dark eyes were slightly bloodshot; her lips bruised and split around her gold tooth. She had also traded her Peacekeeper combat suit for a cobalt-blue, leather coat that draped heavily around her. She concealed her weapon in a hip pocket.

“How do I know you’re the real Natalia?” A curved smile was plucking at his mouth. He was already convinced the one in front of him was real, but he had a strange urge to hear her proof.

In contrast to Scorpius’s stifled expression, Natalia's weariness only deepened. 

“Dimitri did it to you too?” She looked away with tears brimming her eyes but when she turned back to him again, they were gone. “You’re favorite Russian food is an aspic even though Andi wouldn’t eat it.”

“I don’t understand why. It was very enjoyable.” Scorpius remembered the meal with fondness. Andi squealed in either delight or disgust as she pushed the plate away, while Scorpius would wake at night to secretly eat the remnants of it. 

“It was terrible.” She smiled for a microt at the memory, “I’ll never make one again...until...” Her face fell.

Scorpius realized the gravity of her unfinished sentence. She had promised to make it for him again the next time he became one cycle older. Earth called it a birthday. With the way things were, he would never get to eat that savory gelatin again. He hoped to change that.

“What do you want?” she said stiffly, avoiding the topic of her promise altogether.

This simple question caught Scorpius unprepared. He wasn’t entirely sure. Starting the conversation with ‘your husband should die’ was incredibly to the point and Scorpius recognized this encounter required subtlety. Natalia wasn’t as welcoming to him as he initially expected. 

“I want to speak with you about what I saw in the aurora chair recordings. I extend an invitation to my vessel, which is a more appropriate place to speak than this depot.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Natalia said sharply, “if you have anything to say to me, say it now.”

Scorpius’s scowl wiped the struggling smile from his face. He scanned her over again.

“Natalia. Do you believe I am here to harm you?”

“It had crossed my mind, yes, and before you tell me otherwise, I’m going to tell you that I don’t believe you.”

Scorpius snapped his mouth shut.

“Then we are at an impasse,” he spoke softly, trying to soothe whatever was raging inside the woman in front of him.

“No, we aren’t. _What do you want?_ Why did you ask for my release from the Peacekeepers? Depending on your answers, maybe I’ll change my mind.”

“Senior Office Benthos was taking risks with your life. The aurora chair’s purpose isn’t to kill a prisoner. I did not wish for you to die while...sharing your memories with me. If that was your intention.”

Her eyes brightened slightly, so Scorpius charged forward.

“So I put in the request to have you transferred to me so I may conclude their report.”

“Include this in your report, I broke into their command carrier so they would submit me to torture. So that you would know what Dimitri did to me—.” The end of the sentence was a harsh hissing rasp. Pain leaked from the spaces between her teeth. 

“You listened to him! You listened to him over me. I was in love with you, but that wasn’t enough for you to believe me. Instead, you said I was a pleasant distraction. Obviously, I continue to be one. You’re here now. I hope I’m much less _pleasant_ ,” she finished bitterly.

“You kept many secrets, Natalia. I knew very little about your past...or your emotions towards me.” The audacity that Natalia was once in love with him continued to surprise him. His mind couldn’t fully grasp the concept. 

“Don’t pretend that my _emotions_ would have stopped you!” she snapped, “You wanted to believe Dimitri.”

Scorpius thought about his log of their last conversation. It was fortunate that mere solar days ago he had concluded that entry. Despite the flaws in Dimitri’s data, obvious flaws, Scorpius had swallowed them whole without pursuing any additional insight for eighty days. It was as if he had wanted to simply believe Dimitri and question Natalia’s history no longer.

“Natalia, I apologize.”

Natalia’s anger sharpened like she was already seeking the angle in his apology.

“You what?”

“It was wrong of me to accept what Dimitri offered as proof of your future betrayal. I was not thinking clearly. I desired a quick answer to a question you were avoiding, and I took any that was given. But the fact remains, you should have told me.”

Natalia scowled. 

“When would have been the ideal time to tell you I was a murderer? That I was still married? That I almost killed a child I never spoke of? It's...unforgivable. I’m unforgivable. You would have gotten rid of me then. I just delayed the inevitable.”

“Your human morals don’t concern me. If you were Sebacean these admissions wouldn’t be considered irreprehensible.”

“I’m human, Scorpius! I’m a bad human! Not a good Sebacean! I’m practically a Scarran! Why would you want someone like me when you could have someone else, anyone else.”

“From experience, _good_ humans don’t seem to appreciate my company. As for Scarrans, I despise their cruelty but I was raised Scarran. I still embody much of their culture even though I prefer the Sebacean mindset. Regardless, I too am a murderer, as you put it. As for your son and your marriage, while I see your struggle with them, they are unimportant to me in my judgment of you.”

Natalia was stunned. When she finally found her voice, it was hushed, barely audible above the din of the depot.

“So that’s it then? You accept my past, just like that?”

“I cannot change your past, so if I accept you, I must accept your past,” he reasoned. 

“You accept me and my past?” Natalia breathed raggedly.

“Given what I now know,” Scorpius considered as he appraised Natalia’s breathless expression, “Yes.”

Natalia stepped closer to him and for the first time since their meeting, she offered genuine affection. She slipped her arms over his shoulders and hugged him firmly. Scorpius’s arms curled around her waist tightly in return. Immediately, a liquid pleasure transmitted through his synapses.

“Return to my ship, Natalia. There is more to discuss.” Scorpius uttered huskily, which surprised himself. His emotions were oscillating rapidly. They were challenging to properly pin and manipulate.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I can’t!” Natalia rubbed her nose into his cheek, and he felt damp tears. “I’ve already put you at enough risk. It’s not even safe meeting you like this. I don’t know how he found me. He’ll kill you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m harder to kill than one would believe. It's currently unimportant how he found you. I will aid you in his destruction, and that will be the end of it.”

“No, no I don’t want to kill anyone ever again.” She murmured into his neck. “But how did he find me?”

“Come back to the ship, Natalia.”

But then she stilled almost icely against him.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” She drew away from him to penetrate his eyes with hers. Her sudden rage stung him.

“Natalia,” Scorpius sighed deeply, “I didn’t like that you were keeping secrets from me.”

Natalia growled at him and jerked out his arms like their embrace now burned her. With long strides, she began to move toward the departure gates.

The loss of her body against his made him hiss and immediately pursue her.

“Natalia! This is ridiculous. My error is in the past. It means nothing. Dimitri should die. You should follow through with your desire to kill him.”

She spun on the spot and thrust her aggrieved face into his.

“I don’t want to kill him! I don’t want to go anywhere near him. Don’t you get it? When I’m around him, he manipulates my every emotion! He terrifies me! He drives me crazy,” she spit each syllable venomously, “my plan was working Scorpius! The Uncharted is huge. I can keep running. The only reason I got discovered this time is because I was stupid for trusting you.”

“Fine,” Scorpius snapped back, “I’ll kill him myself then. He’s an insulting pest.”

“Don’t you touch him!” she howled with spite.

“You are protecting him?” he questioned sourly.

“You wouldn’t understand.” She spun back toward the turnstiles.

Scorpius caught her arm.

“No. None of that. Tell me now.”

She breathed in a sigh sharply. It straightened her shoulders like she was fortifying for an assault.

“He takes care of my family. He takes care of my son. I can’t do any of that. I abandoned them.”

“So what? You are allowing him to control you for people that did nothing to help you.”

“I told you, you wouldn’t understand,” her voice was raw. She pulled at his grip, but he only tightened it. “Let me go, Scorpius.”

“You can't run forever. Think about Andromeda.”

“Don’t use my child against me!” Her rage cracked at him like a whip and she ripped from his hand. “I don’t understand why you even care! This is all just a big inconvenience for you. Go back to your ship. Go back to work. Forget about me. It should be so fucking easy for you. So fuck this and fuck you! Goodbye.”

Scorpius was alight with his own anger. He watched her back recede into the crowd for microts before stomping back to the depot’s entrance boiling with unused comebacks. Once outside, he snapped at his security team to return to the orbiting vessel without him. The last thing he wanted was to be in close company with anyone on his staff.

He should be thankful to Natalia. His time and energy were obviously ill-spent, and he could go about his life now without dwelling on her. 

However, Dimitri was going to continue to be a problem. Scorpius was sure of it. The idea of that man ever catching Natalia was sickening to Scorpius. He could pursue ending him even if Natalia would never offer her thanks. When had he ever required _a thanks_ before? Perhaps it would relieve whatever struggle remained within Scorpius’s troubled psyche. 

As he walked into the crowded fray of Eplioda-12’s streets, he replayed his final conversation with Natalia ad nauseum. Her accusations were penetrating and emphasized that she didn’t understand his character in the least. There was no reason for him to _trust her._ Why would she expect that of him? However, vice versa, Natalia trusted Scorpius and he had failed her. For some reason, he would have preferred to keep her trust. It was difficult that he couldn’t ignore his need for answers. 

There was no obvious solution to this particular problem. He would have to find peace with this outcome.

As he churned through his mind, seeking answers that evaded him, a familiar person caught his eye. Xhalax, John Crichton’s youngest, was a slight woman but deadly with the bow she carried slung over her shoulder. Its curved tip was visible above the heads of the crowd in front of him. She had incredible, indescribable control over time and space. In the past, when they encountered each other, it felt like Xhalax had conjured him from the ether. Scorpius rather liked her company and he got the sense that Xhalax thought of him as some kind of estranged relative. It was amusing.

To find her now, in the streets of Epiloda-12, was quite frankly, the norm, an absolutely strange coincidence, and if he remembered correctly, which he normally did, on her birthday, nonetheless. She was now twenty cycles old. Scorpius followed after her.

\--

Arns later, when Scorpius finally returned to his vessel, a bone-deep weariness plagued him. He had commissioned Xhalax, a skilled tracker and assassin to find Dimitri, and he was positive she would find him. Encountering Xhalax was a kind of occurrence Scorpius considered luck because he was loath to consider it destiny. Still, despite taking steps towards finding Dimitri, Scorpius felt exhausted by the last two solar days. He hadn’t even attempted to sleep, and his emotions were strung out tautly like Xhalax’s bow string.

He barely settled down on the edge of his cot, when his comm pinged. He uttered an aggrieved sigh.

“Sir, apologies for the disruption, but Natalia Nikolayev is requesting to board. Should I grant her access?”

Scorpius snapped up to standing and immediately granted her permission. He steeled himself for a continuation of their previous argument from down on the asteroid. She was descending a transport ship’s gangway as he entered the transport bay.

Seeing her a second time that day, he decided it was best to keep quiet. His anger was already rising, and he quelled it in the hopes of staying in control of the conversation. Natalia was similarly blank.

“You’re still going to go kill him, aren’t you?” Natalia questioned once she stood before him.

“Yes,” Scorpius replied levelly.

“I’ll never forgive you.”

“I’m already in your bad graces.”

“You are forcing me to join you,” her voice faltered for a microt into the familiar rasp from the asteroid before she smothered it.

“That’s not my intention, but if that’s how it appears, so be it.”

She glowered darkly in front of him, and after several awkward microts more, asked if she could be shown to a guest room. Scorpius, now eager to be outside of her company, in another confusing turn of emotion, requested security to escort her.


	17. Delayed Reaction: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my favorite chapter. Iterations said I shouldn't cut anything, so it's 4 parts long. Hopefully, you'll appreciate the fact that it's the biggest honker in this story. Scorpius is going to Earth, lads! He's falling in luuuuurve (not that he would call it that, probably some passing indigestion).

# Delayed Reaction

## Part 1

Natalia settled into the ship like a haunting. Her cigarette smoke drifted through hallways at odd hours. Sometimes he’d even catch a glimpse of her fading through the ship in blue, green, and shadows. Scorpius's staff twittered in corners until he entered, then they’d stare at him like animals in a weapon’s crosshairs before going about their business. Everyone was walking on eggshells around him. He hated it like he involved his entire staff in a spat he hardly understood himself.

Worst of all, his sleep schedule hadn’t improved. Instead, Natalia’s presence on his ship seemed to summon a fresh series of nightmares from his subconscious. Ones where he replaced Dimitri in Natalia’s family and was tormenting her physically, mentally, or sexually. Mid-rape, he’d startle awake, panting, with his mother’s face lingering in his mind like a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue.

He was starting to feel like a ghost himself; exhausted, emotionally transient, and wandering the corridors listlessly into the night arns. For the first time in days, he discovered Natalia lounging in his ship’s conference room and for once she didn’t make a move to exit the space as he entered.

Scorpius’s cruising yacht didn't have an observation deck. The bridge had an unimpeded 180-degree view of the front of the vessel and the conference room had a panoramic view of the rear. On the edges of the viewport, an observer could clearly see the six engines firing as the ship sailed through space. Natalia was leaning back in a chair with her legs propped on the table. Unsurprisingly, she was smoking.

Catching sight of her from the open doorway, Scorpius abandoned his plans to stand in the conference room, staring listlessly into space. He made to leave instead. Her voice stopped him.

“I want to make one thing clear to you. I went to the aurora chair, not because I was in love with you, but because I couldn’t bear the thought of Dimitri taking one more thing from me. You see, I’m petty.”

Scorpius thought about her statement for a few microts. She was lying. Her heat signature fluctuated as she either tried to convince him or tried to convince herself.

“—And no, I don’t own you if that’s your response,” Natalia continued in the interim, “but it’s a very human way of thinking about relationships. Dimitri certainly sees people as possessions. How do you think I ended up in this mess, to begin with? I’m his possession, and he sees you as my possession that he wants to twist into _his._ I couldn’t let that happen. It sickened me. I had to show you my past in the only way you would trust; from the aurora chair.”

“A succinct summary,” Scorpius stepped into the room, “but at this point, I find it insulting for you to surmise how I’m viewing this situation.”

Natalia blew smoke.

“How are you viewing this situation?”

“The only clear path forward is to kill Dimitri.”

Natalia barked a bitter laugh.

“So simple! How is that an answer? Oh yes, it is so very easy to stroll back to Earth, pop a bullet in his head, wash our hands, and then what, Scorpius? Live happily ever after?”

Scorpius didn’t know what to make of ‘live happily ever after’. What did happiness have to do with anything? He scowled sharply.

Meanwhile, Natalia stubbed out her dying cigarette on the bottom of her boot, pulled another out of the pack, and meandered over to the viewport. She lit it while watching the engines fire blue into space.

“It’s strange to think,” she muttered to the glass, “that this is my first time on your ship. I understand why you like being out here. Quiet. Beautiful. I’ve only been on transport ships. They’re crowded. Their lighting is always on the fritz, and they stink.”

“Yes, I remember,” Scorpius sighed, “from when I was younger.”

Natalia turned to him with a curious expression.

“Is Dimitri on Earth?” he continued undaunted by her segway off-topic. 

Her eyes hardened after his statement.

“Of course, he’s on Earth,” she snapped and returned her gaze to the window. “He’s under house arrest.”

“How do you know this?” 

Natalia ground her teeth.

“I have contacts, Scorpius. How do you think I knew to leave the apartment on Statu Sansu? I’m not some innocent babe wandering alone out here waiting for my darling husband to catch up.”

Scorpius tilted his head. That would explain the message she received on her console, all those mornings ago. The message that told her to leave.

“I never thought you were,” Scorpius supplicated. 

“Yes, well,” Natalia’s eyes flashed at him and then haltingly looked away. She tapped out her cigarette before returning to the conference table to collect the abandoned pack. In the doorframe, both of them were, for one microt, uncomfortably trapped before Scorpius stepped aside. Despite the awkward departure, she leaned closer toward him and quietly murmured. “I appreciate that about you. That you think I’m capable.”

She moved off down the corridor.

“Why would you divulge that Dimitri was on Earth?” Scorpius spoke after her.

“Because you’d find him eventually anyway,” She called back, “and I don’t want to be on this ship forever, I have a daughter to get back to.”

After she turned the corner, Scorpius departed for the bridge to give them the updated destination. 

While Earth was far away from the Uncharted Territories, nearly sixty cycles through normal travel, with the ability to move through wormholes, the trip lasted shorter than an arn. Scorpius was pleased that he had the element of surprise against Dimitri. When the blue planet appeared outside his quarter’s viewport, he pinged his aide to notify Natalia and escort her to the transport bay.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. He didn’t expect to see this planet again and especially not this close. His only images of it were from a remote scouter. Even when John Crichton visited Earth in the last cycle of their time on Moya, Scorpius had chosen to remain on the other side of the wormhole. Harvey, however, shared with Scorpius many of Earth’s locations. Scorpius was experiencing a certain eagerness to see it with his own eyes for once. 

Natalia was already there with her bag when he arrived in the hangar. She was engrossed in a conversation with his aide, smiling heartily. When Scorpius and Natalia lived together, his aide and Natalia were possibly friends. Apparently, despite the length of time from their last meeting, they still had a good rapport. She even laughed lightly at something he said as Scorpius approached. However, his aide practically jolted out of his skin when he realized Scorpius had joined them.

“Sir.” he bowed tightly, “I have received the heading from Natalia. If you approve it...”

Natalia was trying to get under his skin by telling his staff her plans while keeping him in the dark. Scorpius slid his eyes to Natalia, “You gave _my_ aide a heading?” 

“Don’t be sour, Scorpius. Nomiq and I are old friends,” Natalia’s smile glimmered.

Nomiq, Scorpius’s aide, fidgeted with his tablet. “Apologies sir, but I am not sure how to proceed between you two.” 

Natalia tsked, obviously dissatisfied with that response, but she turned to Scorpius.

“The heading is Ростов-на-Дону,” her smile fell.

“Is Dimitri in Rostov-on-Don?” Scorpius had never heard of this location before.

“Nomiq can’t fly the transport directly to Moscow if you expect to keep under Dimitri’s radar. There is a slim chance he already knows I’m here because of your ship in orbit. I’m not sure how well connected he is. As for you, _an alien_ , you will need some obscure Russian state to grant you a visa. Rostov-on-Don is a bit touristy, and out of the way. I hope they will be friendlier than, let’s say, St. Petersburg.”

“A visa?” Scorpius murmured.

“Oh yes, they don’t just allow space travelers to drop in anymore. Too many surprises. All incoming extraterrestrials are now identified and documented.”

Scorpius frowned.

Natalia stepped closer, “Not already second-guessing this plan of yours, are you?”

“Absolutely not,” Scorpius snipped, “I simply disagree that we should go through these procedures to land on the planet.”

“The alternative, if our craft is discovered entering airspace and not responding, is to be shot from the sky with a nuclear missile.” Natalia countered. “That is a gamble I don’t want to take.”

Scorpius’s aide watched their disagreement like following a ball bouncing between sides in a game.

“Fine,” groused Scorpius, who couldn't decide if he was relieved Natalia was finally taking his idea of revenge seriously or aggrieved that he now had to come to an agreement with her on every course of action. “Nomiq, you will fly us to whatever coordinates Natalia suggests.”

Nomiq bowed. He was suddenly smiling. The edges of his lips were slightly turned up.

“At your service, Sir.”

The transport approached the Russian city over a green river delta. As soon as Scorpius’s aide brought the ship into the atmosphere, numerous channels hailed them for information and hinted that greater threats would follow if ignored. Natalia listened to each frequency before selecting the one that sounded like her language and replying. She relayed the specific landing coordinates to Nomiq.

These coordinates led them to a military hangar, barely a half-metal cylinder attached to a ramshackle airport. A jeep drove out to greet them in the muddy snow. Scorpius allowed his aide to depart as two sharp-faced humans directed them into the vehicle. They were immediately interested in Scorpius but then refocused on Natalia once she started asking about recent news, handing out her dwindling cigarettes, and entertaining them with jokes.

By the time, the two soldiers delivered them to an office, Natalia had the two military men, laughing uproariously, ribbing each other, and asking her to stay in town for a while so they could give a local tour. Natalia wished them well. 

The man inside the office was eating a messy sandwich. As Scorpius and Natalia entered he flopped the mess down on the table and wiped his greasy hands on his olive drab pants before gesturing they should take a seat. 

“Apologies! Apologies! We’ve never gotten aliens here before. What’s the matter? Not enough fuel to get to Moscow? I heard your ride already left.” he chortled heartily before scrounging around in his desk. “Sit! Sit!”

Scorpius slipped into the wooden chair with the least wear. Natalia settled into the other without batting an eyelash.

The man at the desk brought out a small device and plugged it into his monitor. He squinted at the screen as he tapped individual keys. 

“Alright! Alright! If I can remember how to use this thing. Alright! We’ll start with—.” The man’s round and ruddy-face immediately turned to Scorpius’s sharp, pale one. He seemed to stiffen a bit before turning to Natalia. “The lady. And who might you be.”

“My name is Anastasia Petrova.” She drew out a small red book and passed it to him. Shocked, he flipped open to the first page and glanced hurriedly between her face and whatever was inside the book.

“Oh, you’re human! And Russian! What an interesting accent you have! Is it Siberian? Of course, you’re Russian. I thought you might be one of them, Sebaceans. Welcome home, Miss Petrova.” 

“It’s a pleasure to be home, sir.” Natalia smiled warmly, but Scorpius noted she was lying again. Meanwhile, the stout man was scrambling around in his desk until he found a rubber stamp. He slapped the ink on Natalia’s book before passing it back. She accepted it cordially. With no one else to question, the Russian accepted his fate that he would have to speak with the obvious alien in the room.

“Ahem,” he said briskly, “and you are uh...?”

“My name is Scorpius, and I am a scarran-sebacean hybrid,” he announced simply.

The man behind the desk blinked. 

“I didn’t catch a lick of that. Do you understand what it just said?” he asked Natalia. Natalia’s dark eyes widened.

“Anastasia…” Scorpius queried, “does the planet not inoculate the population with translator microbes?”

Natalia ignored Scorpius’s question.

“Captain…” she read the Russian’s nametag, “Kiselyoz. _His_ name is Scorpius.”

“Scorpius? John Crichton’s Scorpius?! I’m not allowed to let anyone named Scorpius on this planet!” Kiselyoz sputtered.

“Oh did I say Scorpius?” Natalia barely blinked, “I meant Scorpion. Look at me getting tongue-tied already. Only a few years away from Russia and I’ve lost so much of the language.”

However, Kiselyoz now openly stared at Scorpius whereas before he was hesitant to look at him at all.

“I don’t know, Miss Petrova,” he questioned while squinting, “what species is he?”

“A Plathelminthes.”

“A Plathelminthes…?” Scorpius grumbled sharply. Plathelminthes were a giant worm variety that had approximately two brain cells; one used for sight and the other for controlling bowel movements. Natalia’s delight shined through her glowing eyes.

Kiselyoz wasn’t convinced. His bushy eyebrow had lowered over one eye. He turned furtively to tap something on his computer’s keyboard.

“What is the purpose for your visit?” his once jovial voice had become flat and suspicious.

“It’s our honeymoon,” Natalia patted Scorpius's thigh abruptly, “I want to introduce him to the family. The poor dear has never seen the motherland. You understand what a travesty that is, don’t you?”

Scorpius raised an eyebrow at Natalia’s beaming face, but Kiselyoz’s once-red cheeks blanched.

“Oooh...hmm...congratulations...on your wedding. I hope it’s...legal.” He swallowed a fresh lump in his throat and anxiously began typing on his computer. “Let me wrap this up...Get you on your way. Any fruits, vegetables, soil, or seeds to declare?”

Natalia shook her head.

“Any weapons?” He squinted at her.

Natalia brought out her gun and laid it on the table. She also brought out a small handful of pocket change.

Kiselyoz’s brow pinched on his broad forehead. 

“You went all the way to space, and you brought back...a Makarov? You can keep it.” 

“Thank you, sir.” She repocketed the gun and the change. “Do you need to check my bag?”

Kiselyoz shook his head ‘no’ before throwing his chin at Scorpius, “What about him?” 

“He has nothing, sir.” Natalia said, “Where would he keep a weapon?”

Kiselyoz snorted before pushing the device he had plugged in across the desk. He was once again hesitant to look at Scorpius. At this point, Scorpius was fine with his reaction. It seemed to be benefiting their circumstances that Natalia had made the captain uncomfortable to the point of wanting to be rid of them. Scorpius looked down at the device. It had a small cradle for a finger and a few simple buttons. He placed his gloved finger on the slight divot. It pricked him sharply. Then flashed him with a bright light. Scorpius momentarily saw specks in his vision.

The computer screen in front of Kiselyoz cascaded with data. Scorpius supposed the machine captured his unique genetic code. The captain didn’t even pretend to inspect the sequencing before laboriously tapping more keys. Finally, a machine hidden behind the captain chugged miserably and a plastic card was spat into its dish. Kiselyoz fished it out with his greasy finger, glimpsed between it and Scorpius, and handed it over.

“Don’t lose that. If you’re caught without it, it won’t be my neck, you know what I mean?”

Scorpius examined the card. The flash moments ago had captured an abysmal picture of him. It listed his incorrect name and species and held a small translucent puck in the center that likely contained his genetic sequence. He scowled at the card and then at Kiselyoz. He would have preferred to try to outrun this planet’s nuclear defense than go through whatever this was again.

At this point, the captain ushered them to the door in the same fashion he ushered them in, without any artistry. Once on the threshold, Natalia stopped with a slight curl to her lips.

“Thank you, Captain.” Natalia was actually thankful, which was astonishing to Scorpius. “Not to be a burden, but could one of your fine cadets give us a ride into town?”

“That’s asking too much,” The captain blubbered almost angrily. He obviously wanted them gone for good.

But Natalia smirked, and from her blue coat pulled out a bundle of what Scorpius could only assume was the country’s currency. She drew out several bills from the roll before tucking them into the Captain’s front pocket.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Kiselyoz grumbled as if completely pacified. 

“Thank you again, Captain,” Natalia murmured graciously.

“Quick question though,” Kiselyoz’s cheek pulled his lips so his cigarette-stained incisors showed, “Tell me. Ever keep him on a leash?”

Natalia hissed between her teeth in dismay, while Scorpius levelly stared at him for a microt. Natalia tugged Scorpius's arm lightly, but the captain didn’t drop his vile smirk. It irritated him, so Scorpius stepped tightly next to him and barked loudly, slobbering, into his ear. The captain jerked away from him, terrified, babbling obscenities, as Natalia dragged Scorpius down the hallway.

Out on the wind-swept, snowy tarmac, Natalia exploded in laughter. Scorpius, at first annoyed with the man’s insults, settled marginally as Natalia wiped the tears from her eyes and kept struggling to swallow her bubbling giggles. 

“Oh, my, that was fun! You did marvelously! What a bastard!” Natalia smiled at Scorpius, “Can I see your visa?”

Scorpius enjoyed her bright regard slightly. Making Natalia laugh was something he might have missed from their time living together. He passed her the small piece of plastic.

“Oh my god, how awful!” She burst out into laughter again.

Scorpius sighed in resignation but accepted the visa back. After a brief wait, a military vehicle pulled up alongside them and they got in.

“Kiselyoz does bring up a valuable point though?” Natalia voiced once they were settled in the back and on their way down a very bumpy road.

“And that would be what exactly?” Scorpius soured, loath to mention the man so soon.

“You’re going to need some different clothes.”

“And why would you think that?”

Natalia smothered her smile, “what did I ask you when I first gave you my contact information on Statu Sansu.”

“You asked if I was a sexual deviant,” Scorpius almost fondly reminisced. 

“Unfortunately, everyone on this whole planet is going to think this immediately, and not everyone will find it as charming as I did. Kiselyov is the tip of the iceberg of unwanted looks and remarks, trust me. If that doesn’t convince you, how about the fact that you stick out. You’re wearing full-plate, reptilian, space armor.”

Scorpius was very comfortable looking alien on this planet or any planet for that matter. It wasn’t an unfamiliar experience for him, but he had to concede to her point. 

“What do you suggest?”

The next time he settled into a seat was onboard a train. Outside the window, the Russian countryside blazed past in a blur. Scorpius tried to absorb every flash of building, car, or person he could. While this bullet train was, according to Natalia, the most up-to-date technology Earth could provide, it was a novel experience for Scorpius since riding on tracks seemed arbitrary when there were so many other options for speedy, reliable transport. Natalia had bought them a first-class compartment on this brief journey. It would be only a few arns to Moscow which surprised Natalia. She said in the past it would take twenty arns or more to get to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don.

Natalia set a drink down on the table in front of him and settled in the bench seat across from him. He glanced at the glass then returned to the window.

Natalia kept her eyes focused on him instead.

“I like this look on you.”

“So you say.” Scorpius drawled lazily. The truth was that the new outfit was slightly coarse. Earth seemed to have a fascination with weaved products made of a plant called cotton. 

“If I had found you a pair of fitted leather pants at the train station, I would have bought you them. You know I would have,” Natalia pouted.

Instead, she had bought him something very similar to what John Crichton used to wear on the planet, dark jeans, an undershirt, and a collared shirt. Everything was too breezy. Natalia even convinced him to forego his head covering, and had given him a woolen skull cap to cover his black cranium plate.

Scorpius wouldn’t have felt comfortable at all if it wasn’t for his new leather jacket. Russia apparently enjoyed leather as much as any peacekeeper. There were many options for outerwear in the shops leading up to the train platforms. However, he was disappointed he didn’t have the time to source adequate pants.

“You look like James Dean.” Natalia beamed rosily.

“I do not look like James Dean,” he grumbled. He knew about James Dean from Harvey, but he strongly doubted that Natalia was seeing any honest resemblance.

“You know, I’m glad you finished the surgeries without me. I thought, when we separated, you would stop.”

“Natalia, need I remind you, I have a genetic disorder. I didn’t submit myself to surgical alterations simply because you might have harbored some elaborate desire to play dress up.”

Her cheeks rounded pleasantly.

“Don’t kink shame me,” she purred.

Scorpius sighed and glanced at her.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”


	18. Delayed Reaction: Part 2

# Delayed Reaction

## Part 2

As the train shot northward, Natalia taught Scorpius some simple Russian, so he could at least introduce himself and carry a simple conversation. Some of the pronunciation was challenging, but memorization, for him, was very easy. Scorpius believed he impressed Natalia with his ability to pick up the language. If he had possessed the foresight to learn when they lived together, he’d be fluent at this point, but there was no reason to dwell on decisions he didn’t make in the past.

Late in the trip, an evening meal was delivered, which was a white meat and grain coated with a sauce. Scorpius was particularly interested in trying Earth food. Mostly because Crichton’s memories were ripe with nostalgia for so many meals he was unable to find in the Uncharted Territories. However, what Natalia called chicken and rice, while filling, wasn’t engaging. Scorpius had eaten Peacekeeper rations that tasted better.

Halfway through  _ dinner _ , the sun sunk toward the horizon and the small cabin blazed with golden light. Scorpius was enthralled in the spectacle. The blending of the night sky into purple, pink, then orange, only to end at the rippling, red orb of the sun as it descended behind the planet. It wasn’t a unique phenomenon among orbiting planets. Scorpius could pick any planet in a single star system and watch the star disappear over the horizon. However, Earth seemed to have an exemplary example.

“It’s been eight years,” Natalia whispered to the glass. It fogged slightly from her breath. “I didn’t think I’d see it again.”

Scorpius glanced over to her and while she was radiant in the setting sun’s light, her face was mournfully sad, even forlorn. She peeled herself away from the sight before exiting the cabin, leaving Scorpius alone with sudden deep pain. He picked at his disappointing meal while the world turned to night. He could see the glow of Moscow’s city lights in the distance approaching quickly until their transport disappeared into an underground tunnel.

Natalia didn’t return until moments before the train slowed into the station. She smelled thickly of cigarettes and the frost outside. 

“I got us a ride,” she announced before pulling her bag down from the above rack and stowing a small communication device she called a cell phone in its front pocket. This  _ burner phone _ she’d also acquired in the train station’s shops. 

“What is our plan, Natalia?” Scorpius stood to join her at the door.

“Oh, the plan?” Natalia questioned loudly, “The plan? I thought the plan was to return to Earth so check, done that. Kill Dimitri, if I don’t get captured and tortured forever, of course. And then like magic, skip off into the sunset.” Throughout the sentence, she had become more and more bitter sounding. 

Scorpius frowned.

“Are all humans so averse to planning? Or is it only when it comes to when  _ I  _ ask humans for a plan?” he murmured sharply. “I know you’re mad at me, but take this seriously.”

“I am. I am taking this very seriously, Scorpius,” But instead of sharing her plan, she opened the cabin door and entered the hallway without him. 

He caught up with her on the train platform outside as she lit another cigarette. Despite her brush off only moments earlier, she offered him one which he accepted. It was cold in the terminal under the glass arches that spanned over the platforms. Screens that led up to the central entrance hall were showing clips of violent public unrest throughout the city. A burning car was in one clip. Police arrested a bleeding man handcuffed on the ground. Natalia stopped in front of one screen to listen to the updates.

_...curfew is in effect. Thursday, March 13, 2031: Please report directly to your place of residence. Due to riots, a curfew is in effect. Thursday, March 13, 2031: Please report directly to your place of residence… _

“Welcome home,” she muttered to herself. “You see that flag?” She tapped the screen on a pennant waving above the heads of masked protestors. It was a flag with One Earth written in numerous languages behind a central picture of the globe.

“One Earth... isn’t that John Crichton’s movement?” Scorpius asked.

“Yes, well, sort of. He may have started it, but as you know, he’s not around to manage it.” She threw her spent cigarette on the paving and ground the ember out with her heel. “Russia isn’t a joiner. Especially when it wasn’t our idea in the first place, but someday, we’ll have to realize, we are one Earth, one alien species among thousands. It’s in our best interest to unite. Come on. No hunting Dimitri tonight.”

As she moved through the crowd, she began looking for something. Her eyes scanned over the tops of heads with a seeking focus. 

Scorpius instinctually began looking for anything out of place as well, but everything was unfamiliar. John Crichton’s memories were very out of date when it came to Earth. The entrance hall was speckled with advertising drones flashing bright colors. This part of the building was older than the train platform. The ceiling was made of smooth plaster domes detailed with degrading boughs of carved flowers and fruits. The windows were ovals. At the arched, extensively graffitied doorways, marble steps lead down into a hectic taxi circle. Trash gathered on the building’s edges and corners.

Abruptly, a traveler slammed into Natalia’s shoulder. He dropped something that clattered on the stone steps. Scorpius bent to retrieve it.

“Hey!” Natalia shouted as she grabbed the rude man’s bicep.

“Miss,” the passenger smiled covertly and moved into the crowd, disappearing entirely.

“He dropped his keys,” Scorpius showed them to Natalia, who smiled and collected them.

“You mean our keys, Scorpius.” She read the tag on the key ring. “Let's find our ride.”

Their car was parked in the station’s parking garage and was a black boot of a vehicle with tinted windows and a silver grill. Scorpius opened the passenger door with a wave of excitement. Cars were of some interest to him. As he snapped his door shut, Natalia was already in the driver’s seat, taking stock of the setup. She adjusted her seat and rearview mirror.

“Not bad, not bad,” she murmured, “a good use of a favor.”

She shifted the car into reverse and navigated out of the garage into the bright lights of Moscow at night. The skyscrapers of the city center-hung over the normal rooflines. Natalia was driving toward them, and they loomed larger and larger until Scorpius was craning his neck to look up at them.

“That’s a new one.” Natalia examined a mountain of a structure that appeared half-built. The cranes were still perched to its exposed side. They were likely enormous, but they appeared like toys against the superstructure. 

Throughout the drive, at some streets, the police navigated them away into a detour. Large AI turrets, similar to the ones in Natalia’s memory, guarded each barricade while perched on their spider legs. 

Natalia was an aggressive driver. At first, Scorpius thought she was simply out of practice, but it became apparent, all of Moscow drove the same way. He hadn’t felt the need to use the seat belt when he first sat down in the passenger seat, but after the first few intersections, he reached for it and snapped himself in. He didn’t want to get head trauma from knocking his cranium against the windows each time she made a turn or slammed on the breaks. She cursed often, and at one point, after being cut off, rolled down her window to have a curt conversation with the man that had done it. Some of her language couldn’t be translated.

Eventually, she turned down a quiet alley, parked, and got out. Scorpius joined her at a steel door. Steamrolled from basement vents. A bum slept in a cardboard home while another cooked on a kerosene stove. While Natalia knocked, the awake one watched her silently.

“Name?” a slot in the door asked.

“Natalia Nikolayev,” Natalia said with a perfunctory tone.

The person behind the door made a disgusted sound and the slot shut. Apparently, Natalia wasn’t concerned about the poor reaction. She patiently waited. The microns stretched. When at last the slot opened again, the voice was different, gruffer.

“Natalia Nikolayev is dead. You better have a good reason for using that name.”

“I went to space, Annika, but I’m back,” Natalia responded pleasantly with a hint of warmth and a smile.

The door opened on a large older woman with a large scar on her lip. 

“Get your ass in here then and give me a hug!” Annika rasped. Natalia stepped into her wide welcoming arms. The older woman rocked her like a baby. When she stepped back, Annika inspected Natalia with scrutiny. “I hate your hair. That green is awful,” she summarised before finally noticing Scorpius. “And who is this?”

“Annika, meet Scorpius.”

“Привет, приятно познакомиться,” Scorpius spoke in return.

Annika’s scrutinizing eyes became marginally wider. 

“You’re an alien! Natalia! You taught an alien Russian?” She offered her hand, which Scorpius shook, but aside she whispered to Natalia, “Why’d you make him sound KGB?”

Natalia giggled. 

“Don’t be rude, Annika. His accent is perfect.”

“Da, perfectly frightening. Nice to meet you as well, Scorpius. I meant no disrespect. Come, have a drink.” Annika ushered them down a long hallway into a small, dimly-lit bar. 

Few patrons lingered in shadowed corners. Annika was already behind the bar pouring out three big glasses of what Scorpius guessed was vodka. Scorpius realized he would not be able to pass on this drink. Annika and Natalia had already toasted and finished their glasses before Scorpius even started to shoot it. It was unpleasant given the quantity, but he finished quickly regardless. Annika nodded in respect. Scorpius was pleased he had met her expectations. 

“Now,” Annika poured Natalia a second glass, “I won’t pretend this is a social visit even though I wish it was.”

“I need a place to stay and guns.”

“Figures. I have the atelier available, but you couldn’t smuggle any guns back from space?” Annika shot another glass of vodka.

“Mostly other things,” Natalia murmured.

Annika looked pointedly at Scorpius for a microt before shrugging, “Anything for me?”

“Mhmm,” Natalia’s smile turned smug. She reached into her pocket and pulled out three discs no larger than coins. Annika peered at them skeptically. 

“Let’s go to the back office.” 

Scorpius recognized the discs immediately now that they were separated from Natalia’s human currency. They were detonator droids. Once activated, the coins would grow legs and the person using them could tell the droids in plain language what they needed to blow up within two metras. They were useful and rare. The maker of them no longer existed. Scorpius assumed whoever they were was dead.

The back office was a mess of papers, stale smoke, and old wood. Natalia opened one of the detonator droids and demonstrated it to Annika. It’s little legs scurried around the office but Natalia prevented it from exploding for obvious reasons. It was a small space and they were too valuable to waste.

Annika didn’t appear impressed, but she took the droids anyway. “That’ll do. What guns would you like? I can have them by morning. These damn protests are bad for business.”

Natalia listed a few models but Annika offered different ones. They went back and forth for a moment about availability or the best tactical equipment. Eventually, Annika nodded firmly and Natalia settled back into her seat. 

“Sounds like you’re planning a war,” Annika said with an edge of considered interest. 

“You know he deserves it,” Natalia whispered, her eyes to the floor.

Annika patted Natalia’s hand in solidarity before standing. 

“Come on. I’ll get you a bottle on the house and take you upstairs.”

The room was up several flights of creaking stairs and a final metal spiral staircase. Since entering the bar from the alley, an ice rain had begun to fall, and the cement balcony outside the floor to ceiling windows was speckled with hale. Beyond the balcony, was the half-built megastructure lit from the inside like a skeletal corpse. The space was cold enough for everyone to see their breath. Annika pushed past the pair to turn on a small space heater. It hacked miserably before beginning to pulse a hot red. 

“It’ll take a bit for it to warm up. If I had known you were coming…” Annika mumbled as if embarrassed.

“Don’t worry about it, Annika,” Natalia clapped her on the shoulder, “thank you.”

Annika nodded and flashed a crooked tooth smile before trundling down the spiral staircase taking each step slowly.

Natalia spun the cap off the vodka bottle and settled down on the couch facing the balcony. The little heater was humming now. It was the only light in the room.

“She assumed we are fornicating?” Scorpius noted the single bed.

“Annika assumes a lot. She’s not always right. We’ll be taking shifts sleeping, of course,” Natalia sipped from the bottle and kept her eyes forward.

“Of course,” Scorpius agreed. This was an impersonal assessment. They were in enemy territory now. Dimitri was hopefully still unaware of their presence in Moscow, but sleeping without a guard was a poor decision. “Will you be taking first shift then?”

Natalia gazed at him with an unreadable expression. Her eyes were large and penetrating, but she sighed, dissipating the look. 

“Yes. Get some rest. I’ll wake you a few hours from now.”

Scorpius settled on top of the bed without disrobing his jacket or removing his shoes. He half slept, but when he was conscious he watched Natalia, who moved little but was obviously deep in thought. Late in the night, she spoke to him while keeping her eyes on the window.

“It’s your turn,” she sighed quietly, and Scorpius fully woke to take his turn monitoring. 

Preparing for sleep, Natalia stripped off her blue jacket and what was underneath wasn’t what Scorpius expected. She was wearing a Fader. The bodysuit twinkled strangely in the dark of the room. It was currently off, as she was only going to sleep, but Scorpius was too intrigued not to inspect it closer. 

“How long have you had this?” Scorpius questioned. Natalia let her arm be manipulated in Scorpius’s hands.

“Some time,” she whispered back.

“Tactically, for you, it's ideal.” Scorpius wasn’t often nervous, and he wasn’t nervous now about what was going to happen the following day when they encountered Dimitri, but he was starting to become excited. Natalia would be a sight to behold when the suit was activated. She removed her arm.

“Goodnight, Scorpius.” 

For a moment, given their proximity, Scorpius had the sense that she was going to kiss him goodnight like she had done when they lived together. She hovered for a microt too long, but then moved away. It was as if his heart went with her, but he shook off that feeling in favor of striding away from her to the window. Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched her slip under the bed’s blankets and turn away from him.

Natalia didn’t move until morning when her alarm went off. She quickly woke, rubbed her eyes, and threw back on her coat. Annika came up the stairs with two cups of coffee and simple pastries to report that Natalia’s order had arrived and was downstairs when they were ready. Natalia brought Scorpius his share of coffee and biscuits.

“After you’re done, we’re going.” Natalia sipped from her own chipped mug.

“You said he’s under house arrest,” Scorpius tried coffee for the first time. It burned his mouth, but it was sweet and bitter, a good combination.

“Yes, when I left, the evidence I gathered for Interpol helped them draft a case against Dimitri. But he must’ve had someone or something in his pocket because his only punishment was house arrest. He’s in our Moscow apartment.”

“Are you sure it's him and not a bioloid?”

“Apparently, his tracker monitors his vitals. Interpol must’ve discovered his use of bioloids.”

Bioloids didn’t have vitals to monitor. Natalia’s reasoning was sound. Scorpius finished his coffee quickly and joined Natalia who was already descending the stairs. The next fifteen microns were a blur. Natalia checked the gear, offered Scorpius a gun, demonstrated how to use it, and rolled the case outside to their car. She loaded everything in before taking a deep breath.

“I’m ready. Are you?”

“Yes,” Scorpius purred back.

Natalia wondered if he might actually be excited about fighting Dimitri. She wasn’t. Fear was already slithering up her neck, raising goosebumps, and hairs as it went. She was barely able to keep the light breakfast and coffee down. Still, there was no turning back. If she could successfully kill Dimitri, her life would be different afterward. She hoped better. Natalia stepped into the driver’s seat and Scorpius followed.

She drove through the city including blocks where the protestors were the previous night. Window glass snapped under her car’s wheels. Extinguished fires left the sidewalks black. Burned cars were left as gutted, melted husks. She parked the car on a corner of several apartment buildings before turning to Scorpius.

“This is what is going to happen.”

Their apartment was the penthouse of a building that was slightly taller than the surrounding structures. There was no sniper point from the nearby rooftops nor was there a clear line of sight into the apartment’s many rooms. However, there was a balcony. Dimitri normally posted a guard that patrolled it carefully, but there was one blind spot. She chewed her nail as she waited on the neighboring roof. The rain last night had made the rooftops glassy with water and the sky was still a brushed steel gray even though the rain had stopped.

Scorpius promised to gain access to the security feed, and confirm that Dimitri was really in the apartment. As she waited, she worked on slowing her breathing.

“He is there,” Scorpius’s soothing voice curled through the commlink, “he is in the room that is on the second level toward the north corner.” That was Dimitri’s office. “There are six guards. Three on each floor. Two outside. I will join you.”

“Stay where you are, Scorpius. Watch the entrance.”

“Natalia,” his voice rolled with amusement, “I can be of better use than simply watching the door.”

Natalia huffed and swung her head around the chimney she was hiding behind. The guard was right on the edge of the balcony. She sucked in her breath and ducked, praying he didn’t see her.

“Fine, but be quiet about it.”

Then noting the guard had turned, she shot across the roof until her back was flush with the building’s wall and the vents that shrouded her from view. She kneeled and launched the grappling hook up to the highest ledge. It clanged nastily against the gutter before snapping into place. Neither guard reappeared on the balconies, so she began her ascent. She only had a few minutes before the guard came back. At the top of the vents, where they bent and disappeared into the building, she waited.

If there were three guards on each floor, the ideal outcome was taking out only the three guards on the top floor, and then killing Dimitri quickly. The longer he took to die, the more he would be a threat to her psyche. He could chip her down slowly, just the way he preferred. She shivered. Faster was better. The guard reappeared and she shot him in between the eyes with her silenced handgun. Then she swung down onto the balcony.

She peeked through the paned windows. This was a guest bedroom. There was no one inside. She popped out one of the panes with her fist and slid the window open. Now she had to be quicker than anything. She shimmied out of her coat, turned on the fader, and darted for the door. As she expected, in the hallway there was one guard. 

However, the best part of a Fader suit was that if a person had never experienced one before, they had absolutely no idea how to translate what their eyes were telling them. She charged the man, one hundred pounds heavier than she, holding a rifle, and the only thing he saw was a blur. A shifting human form jittering down the hallway was the last thing he saw before the barrel of a silencer. He died in Natalia’s arms as she lowered him quietly to the floor.

“Exquisite,” Scorpius’s voice caressed her but not through the comm.

She whipped around, and he was there in the hall with her. He peered back at her even as the fader fractured her around the room. She turned it off and righted herself, swallowing back the lump in her throat. Scorpius approached her.

“The third guard is dealt with.”

“Shh,” she hissed quietly and looked at the door of Dimitri’s office. Her hand was suddenly shaking. She was worried if she gripped the doorknob it would alert Dimitri with its rattling. “I won’t be able to open the door.”

“I’ll open the door.”

The relief she felt in that moment was so expansive, she could’ve cried if she hadn’t throttled every emotion away deep in the well of her chest. She nodded blankly instead and watched Scorpius move toward the door as if it were any other door. Natalia followed closely behind. He turned the knob, pushed, and inside there was a familiar, brown-haired, beautiful man.

Natalia shot first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have to ask yourself, am I the kind of person that includes a trope as sinister as "there was only one bed" and delivers? Or am I the kind of person that doesn't deliver? Hmmmmmm.


	19. Delayed Reaction: Part 3

# Delayed Reaction

## Part 3

Natalia staggered over to the corpse in a daze. Her ears were ringing not from the gun firing, but from the blood rushing to her head. She peered down at Dimitri’s destroyed face, and there was no blood, no brains, or bone.

Her hiss became a spitting snarl. She kicked the dead bioloid, and then misery swelled into where her anxiety once was.

“He’s not real,” her voice was deadened and flat. “He must be somewhere else,” she added.

“Where else?” Scorpius spoke sharply.

“I don’t know! I don’t fucking know! These guards...They aren’t even from Interpol! I don’t know what this is?” She began to pace until the screeching of car tires drew her to the window. “Shit.”

On the street far below, three black SUVs pulled up and she counted ten, then fifteen men getting out. She could hear the straps and tackle of their equipment even from the highest floor.

“Shit,” she repeated.

“We should clear the apartment’s lower level of guards,” Scorpius suggested while viewing the same situation on the street below, but as if his voice was the cue, a volley of bullets plummeted through the walls of the office. Natalia dropped to the floor, dragging Scorpius down with her.

“I think they are already here.”

“Yes,” Scorpius agreed.

“That is an artillery gun of some kind to get that kind of penetration. It must be a turret tracking heat signature. You’ll have to follow me.”

Scorpius tilted his head sharply as if he was asking ‘why’.

“Dimitri won’t kill me. The turret will only shoot at you. In fact...everyone will want to shoot at you.”

“Ah…” It didn’t sound like Scorpius had considered this.

But as if on another cue, an explosive boom shattered the windows and a shock wave rocked the building. After the floor stopped wobbling, Scorpius snorted.

“Scorpius! What did you do!?” Natalia grumbled sharply.

“I laid a trap,” Scorpius murmured. “It worked.”

Natalia grit her teeth and rolled up to standing, “Get behind me. Take out the people. I’ll get the turret.” She flipped on the Fader, and flashes of her charging form skipped around the room. 

Natalia barrelled out into the hallway straight into two guards. Their eyes darted around madly at the array of flickering versions of herself. At that moment, Natalia dropped, kicked out the first guard’s knee, shot the second guard in the stomach, and as the first fell, she elbowed his face into a wall. Scorpius finished the guard wheezing on the ground holding his bleeding stomach with a single shot to his head. At the end of the hall, was a three-legged mini turret. It’s robotic eye zoomed in on Natalia perfectly. 

Natalia started towards it quickly, but it’s barrel clicked. She flinched back.

“Move!” 

The click was the turret changing rounds. A dart buried itself in the floor where Natalia stood milliseconds earlier. The turret took a heavy step forward and fired again, which Natalia barely dodged. Scorpius sprayed it with bullets. The turret locked onto Scorpius while being showered and ‘clicked’. Scorpius threw himself into the same room Natalia had disappeared into moments before the artillery rounds started puncturing walls.

“Fuck,” Natalia wheezed angrily.

“Do all the turrets carry two kinds of rounds?” Scorpius muttered, “We don’t have much time.”

“The bigger ones carry more.” Natalia kept low while the turret’s steps moved heavily down the hall. The floor shook. “Windows.”

She kicked one of the window frames out just as their room’s door was blasted open. Scorpius swung his assault rifle precisely at the entrance, felling the two entering guards.

Natalia exited onto the balcony, only to return a second later with her eyes blown wide.

“Can’t go that way! Drone!” She scrounged through the dead guard’s armor quickly and piled several grenades into Scorpius’s hands. “Okay, mini turrets. Weak spots are their leg joints. Get one of these stuck in—” 

The turret was looking at them from the door. The barrel of its gun was spinning around to focus on the pair. Natalia yanked a grenade’s pin and jammed the live device into one of its three armpits. 

She ducked under it and sprinted down the hall toward the elevator just as it was opening. Eight guards were inside. She cringed as the turret exploded. The floor rocked. Everyones’ knees almost buckled, but upon recovering, three men slammed into Natalia. She wiggled and struggled until one of them snapped their head back from a bullet shot before collapsing. Scorpius took out another before the first one dropped on the hardwood.

“Kill the fucking alien!” shouted a man from the elevator, and a shotgun blasted the hallway. 

He cocked the gun, but Natalia was already splintering around the hallway. She had crushed the windpipe of one of her attackers and blew the head off the other. The shotgun wielder didn’t know, but she was actually in the elevator with him. He didn’t realize it until two more men were dead. Scorpius cleaned up the ones that were left and joined Natalia in the elevator. 

“Hi Tom.” Natalia ripped the shotgun out of Tom’s hands, only to give it to Scorpius. “Remember me.”

Tom had enough intelligence to look nervous. “I’m not going say anything.”

Natalia pushed the G level button on the elevator. 

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Natalia countered delightedly, “Scorpius, restrain him.”

Tom definitely didn’t like Scorpius, especially not when being forced to the ground in a chokehold.

“Where’s Dimitri, Tommy?” Natalia asked through cruel, smirking lips.

“Hah,” Tom snorted weakly, “If I tell you anything, he’ll kill me. I’m loyal to the bone.”

“You forget, I can kill you too. Right now.” Natalia slid out a knife from her boot. “So. I’ll ask again, where is Dimitri? Hand.” 

Scorpius brought out Tom’s hand.

Natalia held Tom’s hand delicately in her gloved hand until he jerked, then she closed it like a vice. She rolled the tip of the knife to the top of Tom’s index finger.

“I’m taking the nail,” Natalia penetrated the meat of his fingertip. She elegantly twisted to the flat of the blade. Tom at first winced and then screamed as Natalia sliced his fingernail off. 

“You have so many fingers left.” Natalia pouted. She started in on the next.

“I can’t…” Tom wheezed miserably.

“Too bad.” Natalia sliced into the middle finger as the elevator binged. “Hmm...saved by the bell. Bring him.”

There was nobody in the lobby because the lobby was an exploded cinder, the remnants of Scorpius’s trap. Natalia moved through it quickly to peek up at the gray sky. Above them hovered the manta ray shape of the drone. She clicked the car’s locks with the dongle.

“Get him in the car. I’ll cover you.” Natalia looped off Scorpius’s PP-19 submachine gun from his shoulder and braced it against her arm. She began firing at the drone, who spun its guns at her but held fire before flying higher up into the sky. It wasn’t going to launch missiles at her, so she ran for the driver’s seat.

“I need to get rid of that drone. It’s going to give away our position.” She snapped in before shifting to first gear. 

As she moved away from her parking place, another black SUV drove out of cover and began pursuit. Tom wheezed from the back seat as Scorpius dug into the case for the urban assault rifle Natalia had reserved.

“Do you know how to use that?” Natalia asked as she rolled back the car’s sunroof.

“It is fairly basic.”

“Take out the car first.” The SUV was full of humans, dangerous humans. It was a bigger threat to Natalia than the pursuing drone.

Scorpius exhaled a long breath as he stabilized. Natalia knew the feeling. He fired once and the drone tumbled from the sky in flaming bits. The tailing SUV rolled over it’s burning wreckage. 

“I said the car first!” Natalia rasped as Scorpus sunk back into the passenger seat to reload.

“The drone gives away our position. Now we have exactly one pursuer.” He fished around for another explosive round.

“It’s going to get bumpy then.” Natalia spun the car in a U at the next intersection, downshifting. She cut off three other vehicles, who swerved with centimeters to spare while she fired on the SUV. They fired back. She screeched down an alley and clipped a dumpster.

Scorpius extended back out of the sunroof and breathed out. He fired. Natalia knew it was a direct hit from the rearview mirror but the car kept rolling.

“Scorpius! It’s armored! You need to pierce the armor first!” Natalia yelled as she slammed the clutch.

Scorpius sunk back into his seat to reload. 

“You need to use the armor rounds to hollow out the front grill and then hit the spot with an explosive.” Natalia spun the wheel and reversed down a narrow road. She blasted from her window as two men fired back.

Scorpius popped up again and, carefully, over the course of many abrupt turns whittled a hole in the car’s chrome grill using only single armor-piercing rounds. Natalia had gotten on the highway, but there wasn’t any stability with her driving. Scorpius missed the first explosive round. 

“There are only two left,” Scorpius clicked the second to last in. He went up again. Breathed out, focused on the hole in the SUV’s front, but Natalia swerved at the last second and passed in between two semi-trucks.

“Let me try,” she asked as soon as he sat back down.

“Who will drive?” Scorpius murmured as he loaded the last explosive round.

“Hold the wheel. I have the acceleration. If I’m going to hit anything, shout.” Natalia grabbed the assault rifle from Scorpius and emerged on the roof. Wind whipped past her as she focused on the hole in the following car’s grill. It was a perfect O. She brought her eye to the sight. Breathed out. Her index finger coiled the trigger back.

“Natalia!”

The car she targeted exploded as she dove back to the driver’s seat and swerved away from the vehicle she was moments from rear-ending. When she caught her breath, she looked back. The tailing vehicle was a burning carcass receding into the distance. Natalia kept driving.

Scorpius reseated the assault rifle in its case.

“Tom has died from a bullet wound,” he said simply when he resettled in his seat.

“Fuck,” Natalia hissed. She rubbed her eyes to banish the panic. “Fuck.” 

She had no clue where Dimitri was after the apartment. He could be anywhere in the world. Or anywhere in the entire galaxy for that matter. She couldn’t let the panic choke her. Instead, she focused on the practical. 

“Let's dump the car...” 

Natalia drove around in circles until she found One Earth protesters. The crowd surged through the streets as she brought the equipment case out of the car, dosed a strip of cloth in gasoline, and set fire to it. When the car exploded, Natalia and Scorpius were already making their way to Annika’s on foot.

Once back in the tiny apartment, Natalia took a shower. It was strangely decadent after spending so much time in space. Showers used precious resources and were uncommon in the Uncharted. She lost track of time standing under the spray. Eventually, the water turned cold. She toweled off her hair but didn’t put back on the Fader suit. When she looked at it now, all she thought was failure. They had lost Dimitri. They had lost the element of surprise. There was nothing left to go on, no place to start, only this ending.

Scorpius was at the window. Natalia sunk onto the edge of the bed in only a wrapped towel and put her face in her hands. Scorpius, thankfully, didn’t question it. At length, Natalia sighed.

“What should we do?”

“Find Dimitri.” Scorpius reasoned simply.

“He knows we are here.”

“Yes. That is unfortunate, but not hopeless.”

“How can I find him? I don’t have access to... Interpol records.”

At Natalia’s statement, Scorpius’s comm to his ship trilled. He drew out a slim black circle from his coat’s pocket. A blue hologram of the ship’s captain stood about six inches tall on the disc. 

“Sir. Xhalax Sun Crichton has been urgently trying to reach you. She is in the system. Shall I patch you through?”

Scorpius almost chuckled before agreeing. Natalia, meanwhile, muttered the name again to herself. Sun Crichton meant the children of John Crichton. Why would one of them be calling Scorpius?

“Scorpius! You’re on Earth? I’m on Earth!” Xhalax, even as a hologram, was a small woman. She wore a bow slung across her back and had a series of diamond-shaped tattoos on her thin neck.

“Hello Xhalax, impeccable timing. I’m in the midst of something, can you keep this brief?” Scorpius spoke with a hint of affection.

“Is that Natalia? HI NATALIA!” Xhalax waved broadly at Natalia, who was becoming more and more puzzled about this interaction. Natalia waved weakly back. The gesture seemed to satisfy Xhalax.

“Dimitri is in Moscow.” Xhalax summarised.

“Can you be more specific?” Scorpius pushed lightly.

“He’s here.” A picture of a familiar building wavered in blue replaced Xhalax in the hologram. It was the half-built megastructure. The same one that loomed directly outside the atelier’s window. Then the hologram flashed back to Xhalax’s slight form.

“Can you help us?” Natalia butted in.

Xhalax’s face darkened in a flush.

“I’m kinda, sorta, not supposed to be working. I’m on a family vacation,” she whispered covertly, “but does that information help?”

“It does Xhalax. Thank you,” Scorpius purred.

“Cool. Your ship has the bill. But, if you are still around after yaknow,” she gestured to her throat in the universal sign of cutting someone’s head off, “you’re welcome to dinner.”

“Have you asked your father?” Scorpius tilted his head.

“Nooooo, but he doesn’t know you’re here yet. I could ask him. If you’re interested.” Xhalax rocked on her heels. Natalia figured she must be very young.

“Possibly,” Scorpius concluded, “Thank you again, Xhalax, you’ve been a tremendous help as always.”

“Anytime, Scorpius.” Xhalax bowed slightly, “Natalia.” She smiled before the hologram cut out.

A long pause lingered between the two before Natalia blurted.

“John Crichton’s kid! You hired John Crichton’s daughter to find Dimitri!”

“She’s very good, and you were about to despair,” Scorpius tutted.

Natalia huffed. She placed her hands on her hips and stared at Scorpius, who was acting like this was completely in the realm of ordinary. 

“You’re going to have dinner with John Crichton when all this is over?!”

“Possibly,” Scorpius repeated. For a moment it almost looked like he shrugged helplessly, but Scorpius would never  _ shrug helplessly. _

“The amount of shit you’ve kept from me,” Natalia muttered, “I should’ve been the one to hire a detective. And you’re not getting dinner with them. You’re getting dinner with me. Right now. Let me get changed.”


	20. Delayed Reaction: Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! Here's your gift.

# Delayed Reaction

## Part 4

Natalia had packed a change of clothes in her duffel bag. She brought it out before disappearing into the small bathroom to dry her hair quickly and apply some simple makeup. When she reemerged, Scorpius was still at the window, staring at the megastructure. He turned, and his eyes quickly skimmed over her. She wasn’t wearing anything special, only a pair of dark slacks and a gray turtleneck, high heeled boots.

“Do you think it’s wise to let our guard down?” he asked. “Dimitri knows we are here.”

“Wise?” Natalia reiterated, “No. But if tonight is our last night alive, I’d prefer to go out on something better than chicken and rice from the dining car.”

“Yes, that was subpar,” Scorpius smiled slightly. “What would you like instead?” 

Natalia could listen to him speak for eternity, his slow, rolling cadence, but he did ask her a question. She shut her eyes and sighed, thinking about her favorite Earth meal. “My mother’s white borscht…” She then felt an acute sense of longing. 

“I might have to settle for something else.” She tried again. “A big steak. Or… ragu? Braised lamb shank? A bouillabaisse with a glass of champagne. Solyanka.” She licked her lips. “This is hard. Is there anything you’ve heard of that you want to try?”

Scorpius looked at the old, battered floorboards while thinking.

“Chocolate,” he answered after a breath.

Natalia’s eyes widened and she stuttered into a laugh.

“You are so right! How could I forget about chocolate!” She giggled into her hand, “But that’s a dessert! Thankfully, most restaurants will have a chocolate dessert. Hmm...I want something that goes well with a red wine. Maybe Annika has a recommendation.” 

Natalia hated the idea of going to a place she had dined in when she was with Dimitri. It would poison the evening. 

“She can call us a taxi too,” Natalia finished.

Together they moved downstairs and after a short conversation with Annika about possible restaurants, she ordered them a taxi. As they waited on the street, Scorpius asked a question.

“How can you trust Annika? At any point, she could betray you.”

“Because I do.” Natalia didn’t have a long explanation for Annika. They met when Natalia was a black market weapons dealer and they hit it off. Not every honest relationship was forged because of debts owed. Annika used to have an abusive husband too. Until oddly, he died. She inherited his business and it was doing very well without him. Natalia explained this briefly to Scorpius. He was always an apt listener.

The car arrived and drove them to the location Annika suggested. The small corner restaurant was warmly lit from the inside in contrast with the darkening sky. It was early for dinner, so Natalia hoped she didn’t need a reservation. Waiting in the brisk twilight for a table would be unpleasant. It felt like there would be snow later in the night.

The host greeted them as they entered. He was a younger man in a fresh suit.

“Table for two, please.” Natalia requested.

However, the host seemed to be lost in thought staring at Scorpius. Scorpius shifted slightly under his penetrating eyes.

“Ahem,” Natalia grumbled. “Is there a problem?”

The host jerked back up to her and was flushed with embarrassment. 

“Apologies, sir, miss. Right this way.” He collected a pair of menus and guided them to a table in the back. It was dressed in a white linen tablecloth with a tall candle lit in the center. The flickering flame made all the silverware and glassware sparkle in the dim corner away from the rest of the restaurant.

Natalia sat and removed her gloves.

“Ouch!” She had peeled one off too hastily, and a bead of blood raised on her scabbed knuckle, a remnant from their struggle earlier. She sucked on it without considering where they were before she caught Scorpius staring wide-eyed at her. Natalia realized that sucking a wound was something a child would do, and she lowered her hand abashedly. “Sorry, I should have used some healing ointment earlier. Is this table alright with you?”

Scorpius examined the layout as if he was assessing it once more.

“It is more than adequate.” Scorpius swallowed strangely, “this is...romantic?”

“Oh is it?” It was definitely romantic. Scorpius looked very good in candlelight, perhaps more alien, almost sultry. Natalia flushed again. “We could go somewhere else.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” Scorpius posited with a slight curl to his dark lips.

Natalia buried her eyes in her menu. There were many options that made her mouth water, but the full course options looked the most appealing and had the most variety. It wasn’t difficult to convince Scorpius to join her, especially since the final dessert was chocolate mousse. He was in a pliant mood too. Natalia successfully persuaded him to help her drink a bottle of red wine.

When the host had poured them each a glass and departed, Natalia’s attention was immediately rapt to watch Scorpius try it, which he did slowly, perhaps because he knew she was watching. He smelled it, tasted a bit of it, thought about it, swallowed, and then licked his lips.

“Well?” She peeped.

“Acidic.” Wine in person was better than wine in John Crichton’s memories. It could be this was a better bottle or Scorpius had sharper taste buds. Natalia’s dark eyes were faceted to Scorpius’s lips, which sent warmth through him, or was that the wine? “I like it.”

His assessment obviously pleased Natalia, who relaxed into a smile. She pushed back a lock of hair that had fallen over her ear. “I’m glad.”

Scorpius was very interested in trying everything both due to the delicious smell from the kitchen and to give Natalia his review. It was fortunate that they had ordered so many items from the menu. The first plates of appetizers arrived, Scorpius’s oysters and Natalia’s tapenade. To give Scorpius the full experience, Natalia spooned a dollop of paste onto his plate, and to be fair, Scorpius gave her an oyster. He described the oysters as ‘briny but fresh’, and the tapenade as ‘salty’. Natalia agreed the oyster was better than her dish.

Then came a soup, which was subtle and warming, slightly creamy. A pasta that was hearty but Scorpius was not given a large enough plate to consider filling. He enjoyed the meat sauce and was disappointed when he had finished it. Afterward, two tiny bowls of fruit-flavored ice were delivered. Natalia called it sorbet, to clean the palate. Throughout the meal, she was looking more and more ravishing in the flickering candlelight. The wine must be melting away the stress her return to Earth had caused. She was softer.

Once his bowl was empty, Scorpius moved it aside. 

“Natalia,” She looked up with the spoon still in her mouth. “I’d like to tell you about my past.” 

Natalia pulled the spoon out quickly. 

“You don’t have to…” Natalia’s face shifted into seriousness, “I admit, I did a little research on you...when we first met. I’m sure...it’s painful to talk about.”

“At times, yes, but you have shared your past with me regardless of the pain it caused you. I should do the same.”

Natalia’s consideration was so gentle, for a microt it made Scorpius slightly uncomfortable. Perhaps this meal wasn’t the appropriate time to divulge his tumultuous and difficult past. The wine was altering his sense of reality, but he also recognized he never wanted to forget how she was looking at him at this very moment.

“I’d like that,” she agreed barely louder than a whisper.

Scorpius wasn’t a particularly good storyteller. The story began with a scientific-level of detachment and progressed chronologically. He didn’t pause or wait for emotional reactions. He was still in the abuse of his childhood when the entrees arrived, and he had to pause to eat his coq au vin. 

“I’m not taking away your appetite am I?”

Natalia looked sadly at her filet mignon. She was on the brink of saying something. She tried once and then swallowed it back to try again.

“Scorpius, I have to say this even if you are going to think it’s some silly human sentiment,”  Natalia gazed at him. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

Scorpius scoffed. It  _ was  _ a silly human sentiment. “Don’t apologize for something you had no control over. I am not sharing this with you to gain your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” Natalia sighed, “humans apologize for what we cannot control, because of sympathy. If I could have stopped what happened to you, I would have.”

Scorpius was unable to understand. He wasn’t human. “Then I wouldn’t be me. I would be someone else, someone unrecognizable.” 

Natalia sighed again, her face full of affection. Scorpius was beginning to feel tingly. The way Natalia's hand searched the tablecloth blindly, for something, maybe his hand, made him want to take it gently in his mouth to taste her skin again. It had been so long… 

The spell was broken when she retracted her hand and shook her head at him. “I wouldn’t want you to be someone else, I like you very much as you are, but I… wish you had a kinder life because you deserved one. Everyone deserves a kinder life.”

Scorpius could argue her point, but he preferred to move on. He wanted to get past the death of his keeper, Tauza, before the arrival of the next dish. The story progressed quickly, Natalia had few questions. He was able to get to John Crichton before the salads arrived, and he got to Iracundia before the cheese and fruit did. The last fifteen cycles of his life were straightforward. He accumulated wealth, more low-key prestige, and pursued galactic progress. Scorpius would be the last to admit that he was a little bored, but Natalia was one of the first to point it out to him.

“I wasn’t bored,” Scorpius scowled as the waiter removed their spent cheese plate.

“It’s only an observation,” Natalia was leaning closer to him, her chin propped on her braced hands. “You were genuinely excited to talk about the two times you saved the galaxy. I can understand in comparison, life became a little stale afterward.”

Scorpius snorted, “Until I met you...” But then closed up tighter than the oyster he ate earlier. The wine must be getting to him.

Natalia tilted her head. 

“What about meeting me?”

He wasn’t sure if he should continue that thought, but Natalia’s gaze was so languid and pleasant. 

“Until I met you, I knew exactly what to expect from my life.”

“You mean, you expected to be alone.” Natalia finished quietly.

Scorpius didn’t want to agree to her statement. Thankfully, the waiter reappeared with their dessert. Scorpius was able to hide his discomfort in fluffy chocolate. It was every ounce of delicious decadence that Scorpius expected. He finished his quickly while Natalia had only taken a few bites. She smiled at his enthusiasm.

“Would you like some more? Here.” She scooted her chair closer to him, dug the spoon into her dessert, collected a puff of chocolate-sprinkled whipped cream, and offered it to him. He leaned forward tentatively and sucked her spoon clean. She giggled before touching his jawline with the back of her finger. He melted into her touch.

“Natalia,” his voice croaked, “before I forget, we should make a plan of attack against Dimitri.”

“Good idea,” Natalia cooed to him. “You have any thoughts?”

Scorpius did. He had many. They built up a strategy for the following day over the last item on the course list, a cup of espresso served with a single sugar cube. Natalia didn’t move her seat back to her side of the table. 

It was late into the evening when Natalia paid and asked the host to hail them a taxi. She put back on her coat and reseated her gloves. They shared a cigarette in the falling snow outside. 

A strange thing had happened to Scorpius, he was unable to look at anyone or anything but Natalia. His mind was quiet while his heart was full to bursting, being next to her simply wasn’t enough. Like after his first surgery, when he was able to finally touch without gloves, the hand he pressed to her lower spine didn’t want to be collected, instead, it nestled in. It burrowed a small home there and drew her to his chest.

Natalia made a happy sound against him, but when she locked eyes with him, he slid a hand up her neck and bent her head down. They merely shared a breath through parted lips in the frosty air before the taxi arrived. Natalia pecked him lightly on the mouth before moving away. His chest lurched painfully. He slid into the taxi after her. 

The ride back to their small apartment was strangely tight-lipped after their dinner. They moved up the stairs at a stiff distance and in the dark atelier, the megastructure loomed menacingly in the window. Scorpius joined Natalia there.

“Do you really think we’ll be able to do it, Scorpius? Kill Dimitri?”

“I can’t say with any certainty. He’s embedded in that building of his, but there are two of us. It would have been harder if it was only myself against him.”

“Why would you risk your life? Even when I didn’t want to come?”

“Because he deserves to die.”

Natalia sighed heavily and peeled off one of her gloves, but like at the restaurant, the inside weave caught on her scab. She hissed this time, but before she could staunch the blood, Scorpius caught her hand and pressed his tongue to her knuckle. He cleaned the wound dutifully.

“Are you swearing fealty to me?” Natalia whispered with amusement.

“Give me your other hand.” 

Natalia chuckled darkly and peeled the second glove off with her teeth.

Scorpius collected her second hand and lavished his tongue on it as well. Her blood was richly metallic. It was as decadent as the earlier meal. He realized acutely that he was becoming aroused. Human pants were particularly unkind to erections.

“Scorpius,” Natalia spoke softly, “I’m still very mad at you.”

Scorpius sighed against the back of her hand before straightening. He braced himself. 

“I submit myself to you. If you desire, abuse me.”

This statement apparently surprised Natalia. Her eyebrows lifted into arches across her forehead, before they sunk low again. She cupped both sides of his face with her battered hands and kissed him like an ocean wave receding from a beach, rough at first but then turning soft. Scorpius nearly fell forward when she pulled away.

“I accept your submission,” Natalia murmured breathily. “Go open my bag.” Scorpius stepped briskly away from her toward the corner where her bag sat. “You’ll know what you’re looking for when you find it.”

While Scorpius dug into her bag, she stripped off her coat and draped it over the chair. It was seconds later that Scorpius made an interesting guttural sound. His seeking hands obviously found what she asked him to fetch.

“Natalia…” he uttered thickly, “how long have you had this?”

“I bought it for the occasion. Come here. Help me get it on.” Scorpius returned from the dark corner of the room with a leather harness equipped with a sizable black dildo. He buckled her waist in and jerked the end tightly.

“You were thinking about penetrating me back on Epiloda?” Scorpius’s voice rolled heavily as he fastened her thighs with the same tight firmness.

“I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. I wanted to be prepared.” Natalia stroked his neck as he swallowed. Natalia wondered if he was nervous or excited, perhaps both. In the past, their relationship never took this turn before. Scorpius didn’t appear interested and Natalia was often swept up in his incredible dominance. Now that she was back on Earth, she didn’t have a desire to be submissive. “Get undressed.” 

While he fiddled with the zippers and buttons of his Earth wear, Natalia moved to her bag and brought out a bundle of rope. He paused mid-shoe removal to stare at it.

“Is that necessary?” To Natalia, he sounded hoarse.

Natalia only chuckled and watched him quickly strip out of his undershirt. He dropped his pants over a stiff erection. Natalia’s eyes drifted over his nude body, resting briefly on his many scars and alien musculature. She was mildly aware he struggled with being physically objectified, but it was actually very easy for Natalia to find his body fascinating and exotic. He was, after all, the only one like him in the entire universe. Her fingers danced on his clavicle only to splay lower over the dark rivets dotting his chest. 

“Extend your hands. Wrists together,” she whispered to his cheek.

With his hands tied together, she led him to the bed and tied him to the headboard, chest down. She kneeled between his legs to coax him onto his knees. It was a strange view; his pale spine, his bare hips. He had angled his face so that one blue eye was looking at her. She pet the back of his thigh. He twitched.

Natalia couldn’t ogle him forever. She pumped some lube on her fingers, found the soft divet in his ass crack, and pressed in. Scorpius huffed out sharply from his nose. She pulsed the pad of her finger in and out to lube his entry, warm him up. It didn’t take very long before she added a second finger.

Scorpius was more exposed than he normally liked. If he could blush like a human, he’d be bright red. Instead, he felt feverish, tingly, and mentally foggy. Natalia’s probing fingers weren't relieving his heavy arousal, they were stoking the fire, and the concerning thing was that she’d only just started. Scorpius was already gnawing on his tongue to prevent a string of indecent whimpers. He tried to settle his rapidly beating heart.

The last time anyone had touched him like this was Harvey and that was going on twenty-two cycles ago. He hoped to keep some small shred of his dignity intact instead of melting into wanton abandon when she began to penetrate him in earnest. With Harvey, as with any mental iteration of himself, Scorpius allowed himself particular freedoms he wasn’t sure he wanted to show Natalia. His decision to restrain himself lasted for all of about one micron as Natalia finished working him open with her fingers and prepped the tool she had strapped to her groin.

Natalia then angled the tip of her prosthetic cock against him and pressed it in.

Scorpius’s went rigid as he gasped open mouth against the bed pillows. When she pulled out, conscious thought went with it.

“Frell...” he panted.

“Too rough?” Natalia laughed lightly, “I’ve never heard you swear before.” But she reentered with the same force. 

Scorpius groaned, his legs shivered. He swore he saw stars. Natalia fell into a stern pace, which brought Scorpius into a state of teeth-clenching hisses, delirious grunts, and stuttered whimpers, but it wasn’t ebbing his arousal. He was liquidating in pleasure, and yet he was nowhere near a release. The fingers he felt burning into his hips helped with Natalia’s thrusts but he wanted them on his neck, his chest, or his cock. 

It took him an unknown amount of time to string some words together in between his gulping exclamations. 

“..touch me please…”

Natalia leaned over his back but kept pace with her thrusts.

“Hmm?” Natalia thrummed.

“...pretty please…” Scorpius murmured.

“Oh?”

“...with a cherry on top…”

“Hmm, I suppose. Since you asked so nicely.”

Natalia kissed him which he hungrily devoured and was left bereft when she went to nibble his neck. Her hands finally slid up from the apex of his thighs to brace him against her. He purred wantonly into the pillow, eyes shut, pulling dumbly on the rope at his wrists before one of her hands descended to his half-hard erection. She quickly tugged it back to thick and throbbing. He was snarling, desperate, and winded for release. He moved against her. She licked his black cranium cap.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Natalia whispered in awe.

When he finally did reach his peak, it was as if he forgot to cum. His body shuddered long before the elevated pleasure even cascaded into his brain. He crumpled in on himself like a house of cards. 

While that wasn’t the end of the evening, Scorpius faded out. He was physically present for every microt of it but mentally absent. 

At the end, Natalia cleaned him up, rolled him under the covers, and settled in the bed next to him. Scorpius was only mildly aware of her stroking his jawline and a brief conversation about taking night watch.

“Wake me… when it is my time.”

“Sleep. Seriously, sleep. You need it. You haven’t been getting enough. I can tell.”

Scorpius drifted.

“Natalia...I miss you,” but before he could ask if she missed him too, Scorpius disappeared into the blackness of sleep.


	21. At Tension: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry everyone but I keep writing these chapters longer than I expected. At Tension will be three parts. Thanks for sticking with me.

#  At Tension

##  Part 1

Scorpius couldn't remember a time when he had woken up more rested and comfortable. He murkily surfaced from a dreamless sleep. The white walls of the atelier were bright with sunlight. It took him several microts to process that he was in a bed, piled in blankets and pillows and that it was morning. At that moment, a creak emanated from the staircase. He shot awake. 

Natalia looked back over the banister.

“Natalia!” Scorpius snapped, “You were supposed to wake me.”

But before he threw the blankets off, Natalia settled on the edge of the bed, effectively trapping him. She passed him a cup of coffee, which he accepted even while being angry.

“How incredibly reckless. Did it not occur to you that you need to be at optimal— Natalia?”

Natalia was crying. Her dark eyes were red-rimmed and morose. Tears silently rolled down her oval face.

“I wouldn’t have slept anyway, Scorpius. It would have been wasted,” she said blankly.

Scorpius put down his coffee and slithered closer to her. He felt like a satellite trapped in her gravity well, either moments from falling to soil or becoming trapped in orbit.

“Why are you crying?” He stroked her damp cheek with the back of his bare index.

“I’m scared. This feels different than yesterday. More real.” Natalia didn’t meet his eyes with her own. They were distant and angled towards the floor.

Scorpius gently took her chin and turned her towards him. Her eyes flashed up to his. A big tear fell from her lower eyelash. Scorpius watched it slide down her face, and when it was halfway down the apple of her cheek, he leaned forward to lick it away.

“Natalia,” he breathed hotly into her cheek, “you must be aware that you’re exceptional.”

“Am I?” Natalia whispered back.

“Yes,” Scorpius brushed her lips with his own. His eyelids sank closed. He wasn’t familiar with this desire. The first kiss was light, a hint of pressure on her upper lip. Then it deepened, his mouth opened and Natalia’s followed to match. 

Scorpius gripped the back of her neck with a hand to keep her against him, but Natalia didn’t resist. Instead her previously limp arms wrapped around him, bringing him closer. Natalia’s tongue licked the backside of his teeth. He growled into her and dragged her down onto the bed. The universe had become no larger than the space their mouths inhabited. His body was alight with heat that didn’t burn.

Scorpius felt giddy, like he was a younger version of himself but not under Tauza’s control. As if there was some version of himself, hidden in his subconscious, that he had kept protected for exactly this purpose.

Scorpius broke their kiss with a lecherous lick to her bottom lip. Natalia whimpered in protest and her eyes fluttered open. Her hair was ruffled in the sheets. She looked properly debauched. Her eyes glittered when she looked at him.

This woman loved him. He knew it implicitly now. The future was theirs for the taking, but first, her husband needed to be neutralized.

“We can’t fall behind schedule,” Scorpius purred before rolling out of bed. He collected his coffee and moved naked over to the window. The glass structure gleamed like a dark mountain on the horizon. Scorpius felt Natalia’s eyes on his spine.

Eventually, she joined him. She had straightened her mussed hair, and a small smile graced her lips.

“Remind me of your plan,” Natalia spoke barely above a decibel, “I might’ve been distracted last night.”

Scorpius repeated his plan from their dinner. Natalia listened with a bright-eyed intent, asking questions only when it became confusing. Scorpius had prepared most of the vital parts before departing his ship for Earth, so thankfully, they didn’t need to call in a drop shipment. It was unfortunate that the inspiration for his idea came from Dimitri, but sometimes the best ideas came from the most distasteful places. Scorpius wasn’t going to judge a good idea if it was applicable and it worked.

Preparation took most of the morning. By the time Scorpius and Natalia stood before the sliding glass doors of Dimitri’s lair, the sun cast the orange light synonymous with the late afternoon. The snow heaping the pavement from the previous night was dirtied with mud. It was a slurry of ice and detritus along their walk into the megastructure’s front doors. 

While the rest of the building was under construction, the lobby was finished. The expansive entry was made of sheets of gray marble, opened like book pages scaling to the third or fourth floors. The seating areas, speckled at respectable distances, were dwarfed in comparison. A cement security desk took up the center of the lobby like a hostile entity. It was equipped with several guards and a bank of metal detectors.

“Welcome to the Obraztsovyy. Identifications please,” a dark-suited guard asked with a perfunctory drone.

Natalia drew out a blaster from under her coat and opened fire on the desk. The guards were cleared in an instant, but Natalia hopped the counter to finish off the ones struggling for life. Scorpius slid over the polished cement surface and dropped down in front of a security computer. He plucked the badge from a dead guard’s jacket, jammed it into the machine’s reader, and after reading the prompts, scanned the guard’s limp index finger. Once given access, he sorted through the building’s occupancy list. 

“Dimitri is listed as occupying the upper floors before the construction,” Scorpius said aloud.

“One of these guards is from Interpol.” Natalia flipped open the guard’s coat jacket and sorted through his pockets. She drew out a small handheld device. It blinked at twenty-second intervals. “A vital reader?” She passed the piece of tech to Scorpius. He looked it over while passing it between his two gloved hands.

“Maybe. If Interpol is here, I believe Dimitri is in the building. Keep it on hand. Whatever it is, it might be useful.” 

Scorpius moved out of the security booth towards the escalators with Natalia following close behind. Elevators were unfortunately out of the question. At some point, caution tape blocked the escalators’ entrances, but the tape was shredded and hung limply. The stairs themselves were motionless. Natalia began the ascent first with her blaster armed and ready. At the top of the escalator was the beginnings of an atrium garden and a fresh wave of guards.

Natalia and Scorpius dodged into separate stone-lined enclaves. 

“Stand down, Miss Nikolayev,” One of the guards spoke through a bullhorn. It crackled uncomfortably at each space between words. “Dimitri is under the protection of Interpol.”

Scorpius grumbled from his cover for a beat before Natalia responded.

“And his use of bioloids across the galaxy is sanctioned then under your protection?” Natalia questioned bitterly.

The Interpol agents quibbled among themselves for several long seconds. It started to get heated for a moment before the conversation settled. The megaphone buzzed as it was clicked on.

“It is. Dimitri is a representative of Earth.”

“He’s your spy!?” Natalia rasped, “You’re using his intel on the Uncharted?”

Interpol didn’t humor this question with a response other than “Nikolayev and the Plathelminthes, put down your weapons. You are under arrest.” 

“Fuck that,” Scorpius grumbled as he swung an arm around his cover and fired chaotically at the agents. Interpol returned fire.

Natalia unclicked a grenade’s pin with her teeth and lobbed it up into their embedded position behind an atrium planting bed. The agents dodged away, out of cover, and Scorpius plucked them off. The grenade exploded, kicking off the minutes-long firefight. Natalia and Scorpius methodically moved into the garden as their attackers fell. After several waves, the pair were the sole living creatures among the deceased. Wreckage and corpses speckled the once pristine garden level.

“We could use the construction elevators? Or the window washing lifts? Cranes?” Natalia offered as a means to scale the building.

“Dva!” 

Scorpius turned quickly to spot Dimitri scaling down one of the escalators from an upper level into the garden. In the orange sunlight, his brown suit gleamed like a gemstone, the same color as his eyes. Natalia hefted her blaster.

“I knew you’d come back to me eventually,” Dimitri simpered across the garden. Natalia fired a shot at his head, but the blast pinged off of him. A barrier’s shimmer cascaded over him. “Sorry babe, you’re going to have to get closer than that. Didn’t want to make it easy for you.”

They holstered their guns. Scorpius cracked his knuckles. 

Dimitri was already sprinting down the nonfunctional escalator at them. Scorpius and Natalia rushed to meet him. Dimitri struck at Scorpius first, aiming for his face, but Scorpius countered his strike with a hit to his ribs that Dimitri dodged. Natalia threw her fist at Dimitri’s neck. Dimitri caught her wrist and spun her into Scorpius. They shuffled together for a moment as Dimitri slammed a kick into the pair, toppling them. 

Scorpius rolled and shot a foot at Dimitri’s knee, which caught him unprepared. His knee buckled which Natalia capitalized on by slamming her elbow into his eye socket. Dimitri spun on his knees away from them. His eye was undamaged.

“You’re not the real Dimitri,” Natalia stated loftily as Dimitri recovered to standing.

“Ha!” Dimitri pushed his hair out of his eye, “At this point, it’d be stupid for you to think I was.” He launched forward again, and Natalia and Scorpius counter his attack by flipping him into a garden planter. The brick form crumbled under his mechanical body. He launched away as Scorpius’s foot slammed down where his head had been milliseconds ago.

“So are you going to come at us one at a time while the real Dimitri escapes?” Scorpius spit at the dodging bioloid.

“Escape? The purpose is to trap you. I’m confident you’ll tire eventually.” Dimitri flippantly replied as he cracked a fist into Scorpius’s mouth.

Natalia barrelled into him. They rolled against the tile, while Dimitri trapped her arms with his legs and began to squeeze. Scorpius piled onto him, forcing his neck into a chokehold. Dimitri flipped out a butterfly knife, but Natalia blocked his strike and shattered his wrist.

Scorpius popped Dimitri’s neck. The bioloid went limp, his neural connection severed.

Natalia freed from Dimitri’s legs, pressed her blaster to his eye, and fired. Scorpius uncoiled from the dead bioloid.

“One down.”

“Yes, but how many to go?” Natalia wondered aloud.

“He’s an arrogant ass,” Scorpius contributed, “but we won’t tire.” He smirked.

Natalia spun the butterfly knife. “No, we won’t.”

“So, construction lift or crane?” Scorpius asked again.

“I can do this all night!” Dimitri shouted across the garden.

This Dimitri was in a dark suit and as he walked slowly down the escalator into the destroyed garden, a large arachnid-shaped weapon slunk out of the shadows behind him. Unlike the turret encountered in the Moscow apartment, this one was the size of a tank. Its bulk was carried on four thick legs. When it crawled out behind Dimitri, it passed over him in seconds. If Dimitri lifted his hand straight into the air, he wouldn’t have been able to touch its belly. However, it stopped short at the bottom of the escalator and swiveled around as if blindly searching.

Dimitri apparently found this strange. His eyebrows knitted together and he frowned.

“What’s the matter? He’s right there!” Dimitri huffed at the turret. The AI turret continued to scan the garden. Its servo motors trilled as its several eyes flickered around the atrium. 

“Ha, it can’t see us,” Scorpius breathed to Natalia.

“I bet as soon as we open fire, it’ll lock on,” Natalia reasoned.

“Hmmm,” Dimitri scratched his chin. “Now this is interesting, isn’t it? You two aren’t real, are you? You have no heat signatures. That vile little worm stole my idea!” 

Scorpius hissed between his teeth and opened fire at Dimitri. All six of the AI’s eyes snapped in on the heat of the gun’s muzzle. It crouched low over Dimitri to shield him from the shower of bullets. 

“I’ll take Dimitri,” growled Natalia, “the turret is yours.” 

Scorpius nodded and continued to speckle the machine with gunfire that made zero dents on its carapace. The turret took one step in his direction and its large gun began to spin before peppering slugs into the concrete. Scorpius sprinted away in the direction of the construction elevators.

Dimitri meanwhile was climbing back up the escalator in retreat. Natalia feinted around the turret that couldn’t see her and scaled the elevator after him. With her long stride, she caught up quickly. She cuffed his ankle with the tip of her boot.

“I’m not wasting my time with you!” Dimitri lashed back kicking her squarely in the chest. Natalia caught his ankle and threw him into a wall. The cement cracked.

“This is my duty,” Natalia slammed a fist into his chest. The mechanical casing around his fake ribs popped. “I will perform it as requested until I am destroyed.” 

Dimitri threw her off even though his torso sagged on the side she struck. His hands grabbed for purchase on her coat. She snapped another wrist like it was nothing. 

“Now fight me and perish,” Natalia barked.

Meanwhile, the real Natalia and Scorpius were scaling down the outside of the building. The wind whipping them was so icy it could’ve left lacerations on exposed skin. Even though her fingers were chilled to numbness, Natalia cut a precise hole in the glass exterior and slipped into the dark rooms of Dimitri’s new apartment.

Once inside, the wind died down except for the howl from the cut.

Natalia shuffled off her protective clothing revealing her fader suit. Scorpius dropped his own face wrapping. He was back in his old armor for this confrontation. 

“The clones have been detected.” Scorpius summarized quietly to Natalia, who was scanning the room with a blinking gadget.

“I heard exactly what you did, Scorpius,” Natalia tapped the comm pressed into her ear as a reminder. “I still can’t believe you smuggled a shrunken bioloid chamber into Russia. Without even telling me! And three blasters! Grenades! A vital tracker! What else have you hidden on you?” She scrutinized his armor again with her piercing eyes.

“It remains true no matter how many times you repeat it, Natalia. I would’ve told you immediately if you had been open to sharing.” Scorpius reasoned with an edge of condescension. 

Natalia scoffed brutishly and tapped the device she held. It pinged dimly into the blackness of the room they had entered. Along one wall, it blinked faster. 

“He’s not close. These apartments must be very large.”

“Or he’s absconded into some other obscure location in this giant compound. Follow me, I have better vision in the dark.” Scorpius led her into the pitch-black halls of the apartment. 

With his obsidian armor, he was almost enveloped like a deep-sea creature disappearing into the underwater caverns within the Earth. Natalia followed briskly behind only because the red light beeping of the vital tracker bounced off his glossy scales.

The apartment was labyrinthian. Many rooms were empty, and Natalia had to check them all. After the first vacant floor, they wandered into an open sitting area. White sheets hung over the furniture. The banister on one side of the room overlooked a more occupied kitchen area. The blackout drapes were open below, letting the light of the orange sun slice across the slate floor. Natalia silently took the staircase, while Scorpius hovered above in the dark. When Natalia signaled the all-clear, Scorpius joined her with matching stealth. The vital tracker was pinging a little more rapidly now. The rooms were lit on this level, humming with a dimmed overhead light and the setting sun. 

Scorpius inspected the living space alongside Natalia.

“He must be a fan of yours,” Natalia gestured to the glass case in a lit alcove. It housed a Neural Projection Oppressor. The diodes around the crown were their normal red. It was currently online and ready for use.

“Hmm,” Scorpius barely blinked at it.

“I can’t believe he left it on,” Natalia peered into the glass case.

“The energy cells are self-sustaining. I wouldn’t design something that would fail at an inopportune time.”

They continued further into the rooms, but the next door Natalia opened was a girl’s bedroom. Natalia's breath caught, and she immediately backed out in the hallway unable to take a lungful of air. She shivered in shock.

Scorpius darted into the room only to find Andi asleep in the bed. His skin goosebumped unpleasantly.

“She’s not real,” Natalia whimpered by his side. She was several shades paler now in the methodically slow red pulse of the vital tracker.

“No, she’s not,” Scorpius agreed. The vital tracker wasn’t picking up another life from within the room.

“I can’t,” Natalia gazed at the slumbering child like she was trapped, “I couldn’t.”

“We’ll leave one of the chemical grenades in the room. She’ll disintegrate seconds after we leave and shut the door. Bioloids can’t feel, Natalia.” Scorpius spoke to her softly. 

Right now was an inopportune time to explain that depending on the bioloid, its construction, the length of its life, and whether it was designed to have free will or not, were the determining factors of whether a bioloid  _ could feel _ . For a brief second, Scorpius remembered Sikozu, and while it had been decates since he’d considered her at all, it would be despicable to consider her  _ unfeeling _ .

Natalia was unable to look away. 

One glance at Natalia’s blank expression convinced Scorpius that Natalia was not in the mental state to delve into the ins and outs of whether this bioloid version of her daughter was sentient or not. Honestly, that discussion would complicate their mission to the point of jeopardizing its success.

“Natalia, she’s not real,” Scorpius repeated again. This time she nodded like her head was a puppet bobbing on the end of a string, and quietly backed into the hallway.

Scorpius unpinned one of the chemical grenades he’d prepared. It contained the poison that he used to disintegrate the bioloids on his ship. He lowered it quietly to the ground just as the gas began to froth out. Andi was beginning to wake the moment he clicked the door shut.

“She looked real.” Natalia’s voice was a ghost of her normal cadence. “Did we have to destroy her?”

“Yes,” This was the only thing Scorpius could say to the fear-paralyzed mother. The bioloid copy of her daughter was already being used as a psychological weapon against her.

“You don’t think the real Andi is here? Maybe Dimitri found her while I’ve been…” Natalia chewed her thumbnail viciously while Scorpius ushered her further down the hall.

“Andromeda is safe because you made her safe.”

Natalia threw one final glance at Andi’s bedroom and witnessed the gas billowing out of the crack below the door. She took a stabilizing inhale.

“My son. Do you think I’ll encounter my son?” Natalia whispered to him.

“Natalia...Try to stay focused. This is Dimitri’s preferred tactic to undermine you.” Scorpius reminded her as they rounded another corner. “But if we encounter your children again… we will know if they are bioloids or not.” He pointed to the vital tracker that was beginning to blink faster and faster as they moved deeper into the rooms.

At the end of the long hall was a locked door. The touchpad above the handle was a thick bar of red. Scorpius and Natalia examined the frantically blinking vital tracker. Scorpius brought Natalia several steps away from the door and fired a series of rounds at the lock. It remained active.

“I can bypass the lock, in time,” Scorpius grumbled.

“We could go around,” Natalia offered with a lack of emotion behind her voice.

“Or you could let my wife enter alone?” Dimitri’s voice buzzed brightly from inside the hallway. “Decisions, decisions. I think Natalia and little old me have a lot to talk about without some sick interloper. Don’t you think so Natalia?”

“You made a bioloid of Andi!!” Natalia snapped, completely dismantling her moments earlier emotionless drawl.

“She’s my daughter too, Dva. Is it a sin to want to know her?” Dimitri murmured sadly, “You took her away from her family.”

Scorpius growled, “Natalia, don’t humor him.”

“You stay out of this!” groused Dimitri, “What right do you have to get involved?”

Natalia’s face pinched painfully and she spun aggressively away from the door. She began to stalk down the hallway. Scorpius chased after. The intercom buzzed to life keeping pace with her retreat.

“There is nowhere to run, Natalia. You’re here now. We’ll have to talk about this eventually,” Dimitri simpered softly.

“We’ll find a different way in,” Natalia snipped at Scorpius, “I’m not going in there alone.”

“Wise,” Scorpius agreed.


	22. At Tension: Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we're cooking with gas! I'm posting every other Tuesday if that helps you nonsubscribers. The story itself is almost complete. It is most definitely 26 chapters in total. Definitely! This will not change as I have one last part to write. Whew! Thanks for reading!

#  At Tension

##  Part 2

“What’s your status?” Scorpius’s voice crackled through bioloid Scorpius’s comm.

“Turret,” the bioloid croaked, “I’m at 57% efficiency and falling.” 

He was missing an arm. Its absence wasn’t helping in his fight against the turret. The rifle could only be fired with little aim with the butt propped and leveraged against his hip. Currently, he was hidden behind a bullet speckled column outside in the higher reaches of the construction site. Snow was blowing in with the oncoming night.

“Where is your counterpart? I haven’t received a response,” Scorpius queried.

“Her comm went offline during her fight with a Dimitri bioloid. Status unknown,” the bioloid winced as he heard the heavy footsteps of the turret overturning rubble and cracking cement.

The Scorpius on the other line sighed. He was obviously disappointed in their performance. Bioloid Scorpius could only agree. They had performed poorly.

“I require the building’s electrical grid,” Scorpius requested. 

The turret continued to search for him in the background. Soon he’d have to switch cover, perhaps closer to a crane. Bioloid Scorpius cursed under his breath.

“What was that?” snapped Scorpius like an aggravated father.

“What is your location?” the bioloid backpedaled.

“Dimitri’s quarters. There is a door. It needs to be unlocked.”

Bioloid Scorpius swallowed as the turret stopped its bassline trundling and suddenly squared up its legs. 

“I’ll have to call you back.” 

The AI tank opened fire, hailing him with bullets. The bioloid darted away into the steel framework of the building. The column he was hiding behind split and folded on its rebar reinforcement. It fell on the approaching turret, but with one strong shake, the massive column fell from the tank’s head. The debris broke apart in heavy shards.

Bioloid Scorpius had a plan. It wasn’t exactly what his original asked him to do, but it would have to do, given the circumstances.

The original Scorpius frowned tightly as he was hung up on.

“Bioloids…” he muttered to himself.

Natalia and Scorpius had run into some trouble themselves. While they had exited the hallway to Dimitri’s room, several Dimitri bioloids had greeted them coming down the living room’s stairs. They were easy to corrode with Scorpius’s grenades. Meanwhile, Natalia was becoming more and more jittery, slightly erratic. They were at the lowest level of the apartment now. It was a spacious layout although sparsely furnished.

“This floorplan doesn’t make any sense. We’ve gone one or two levels below Dimitri. It should be right above us, but there are floors missing.” hissed Natalia. She was pacing below the spot like she could wear a hole into the floor.

“It’s a safe room. The point is to be difficult to breach, Natalia.”

“Don’t  _ Natalia  _ me,” she snarled. “I want to rip his arms off. I want to feed them to him, finger by finger. The nerve,” Natalia ground her teeth. “To hide after all this time. I thought he’d want a fight, but instead, he’s a coward!” 

Scorpius sighed. This wouldn’t do either. Natalia needed to stay calm, not frothed into a frenzy.

“Don’t welcome his involvement yet,” Scorpius stated as he mapped the room with his eyes. 

They could go outside, get around Dimitri’s safe room. Scorpius would be surprised if the room had an exterior facing wall, but it wasn’t unheard of. He began to walk towards the apartment’s entrance doors. He imagined there was an elevator bank on the other side of the door. If he was lucky, perhaps an emergency stair that had roof access.

Scorpius cracked the front door and slithered beyond it. As expected, it was a small entry with an elevator. Glass lined one side of the room. The space was minimal, but there was a ceramic vase in one corner that contained large plumes of feathers and flowers. The vase was rattling, which was strange. It looked dense and heavy, either made of stone or concrete. But then Scorpius looked out the window, and his eyes widened. 

He quickly retreated past the apartment’s doors as the massive turret came barreling in through the glass with his bioloid clone scrambling between its four arachnid feet.

The AI’s preferred method of tracking was body heat, and while the clone had been fun for the turret's goldfish-like brain after it had marked the bioloid, the tank desired deeply to be pat on the head for doing a good job and told it could power down. Whatever room the turret exploded into moments ago, had the higher heat signature the turret was originally asked to attack. The AI heaved a creaking sigh of relief and began to open fire on its new target. Much to the tank’s joy, this new prey was equally fast and the terrain was fresh and strangely cramped. 

Natalia and Scorpius bolted up the stairs followed doggedly by Scorpius’s now ramshackle duplicate.

At the top of the stairs, back in the living room, Scorpius grabbed the clone’s leather jacket and slammed him into the kitchen island.

“This is not what I asked for!” Scorpius gnashed through his teeth. The duplicate wiggled in his grip.

“You have a door problem. This is a door solution!” the bioloid offered like a used car salesman selling lemons.

The floor buckled as the turret began to push up into the level. It was clumsily scaling the stairs after them. For a moment, it appeared stuck. While Scorpius heaved a sigh of relief, his clone frowned tightly. His plan was foiled.

The turret clicked once.

A rocket shot out of the stairwell exploding against the ceiling. The above floor groaned and bent down, showering concrete slabs. Natalia, the clone, and Scorpius scrambled away as another rocket went off, striking the floor from below. This time, the living room collapsed downward, and the turret loomed up. Debris falling off its armor as if the pieces were weightless. The lights flickered before the apartment went black. Only the light on Dimitri’s safe room door remained illuminated.

The turret began down the hallway. It was spacious enough to accommodate the tank’s bulk, but it left a curved fracture along the ceiling. Light fixtures exploded as it approached. The triad had disappeared into one of the last alcoves along the wall.

“It stopped,” the clone whispered.

The gun sat patiently in the hall like a dog waiting for its owner’s command. 

“It needs to come closer,” Scorpius grimaced. “Bioloid. It’s your time.”

The bioloid immediately looked doleful. Its blue eyes became round and pleading.

“No,” Scorpius corrected sharply, “Perform your duty.”

The bioloid sighed painfully but stepped out into the corridor. The turret’s guns immediately spun up and fired on the bioloid, ripping the clone to shreds but also buckling the metal door in large craters. Even after a brief spray of fire, the door was as destroyed as Scorpius’s bioloid duplicate. His remains sank to the ground. The door fell open with a creaking yawn.

Scorpius took a deep breath in and sprinted from his alcove through the door with Natalia at his heels. The tank groaned into a charge before slamming into the door’s slot. The room was clearly reinforced. It struggled to wedge itself in, but now stuck, it launched another missile. 

Scorpius and Natalia threw themselves in opposite directions as all the windows shattered. The security booth fizzled to sparking wires and black screens.

“Воля!”

The turret settled immediately at the shouted word. A piece of debris fell from the ceiling and bonked it on the head. The room itself was mostly shattered windows, a security booth with a bank of dead screens, a packed bookshelf, and a gray sheeted bed. Everything was covered with ash, glass, or pulverized concrete.

Dimitri picked himself off the ground, coughed, and swiped dust from his dark pants before pinching a live ember on his shirt collar. He was significantly dressed-down compared to his clones. He wore a collared shirt without a tie and no coat, but he was a man under house-arrest after all. His tracking anklet clinked as he stood. Natalia’s vital tracker blinked furiously from her belt.

“Well, wasn’t that electrifying?” he glimmered to Natalia and Natalia alone. His brown eyes focused on her hungrily. 

Natalia was on her feet in microseconds. The panic on her face was broader than it had been moments before outrunning a turret. She drew out her pistol and fired once. The bullet pinged off his electro shield as he shook his head.

“You really want to kill me that badly?” He opened his arms down in surrender and took one step closer to Natalia. She moved away with her pistol as her only defense. “Natalia…”

“Yes, I want you dead!” Natalia snapped gutturally, “You’ve ruined my life! You’ve chased me across the galaxy. You stole my son! You won’t let me leave. If you’d only  _ leave me alone! _ ”

Dimitri’s eyes turned beseeching.

“Clones, Natalia. They are incomplete versions of me. Apparently, I harbor a desire for you no matter how many pieces I’m broken into and spread across the universe. I don’t control them. Are you in complete control of the bioloids you sent to kill me?” Dimitri’s voice was soft and calm like he was speaking to a child and not a raging woman wielding a gun at him. Natalia’s grip on the weapon tightened. “I love you very much, Dva. You’re a part of me. We’re a family. I want us to be a family again.”

“Don’t!” Natalia took a step forward this time, “you’re a liar. You only want the part of me you can control.”

Meanwhile, Scorpius was quietly watching their encounter. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. She was doing well, and if she faltered, he would aid her.

Dimitri sighed woefully. He turned his back on Natalia and wandered to the broken window.

“I admit, I haven’t made loving me easy for you. All I wanted was to see you again and say I’m sorry. I can be better to you. I swear! I’ve had a lot of time to think while imprisoned here, and I haven’t been good to you. I don’t know what I was thinking, drugging you like that,” he looked pained, “I’m a sick person, and I need help. It’s too much to ask you to keep loving me when I’ve been so awful to you, but I beg you to try. For our children at least. Your son misses you. Wouldn’t you like to see him again?”

Natalia lowered her weapon. Scorpius clenched his teeth.

“Focus Natalia!” he barked at her.

Dimitri’s previously soft eyes snapped rigidly on Scorpius.

“You stay out of this!” Dimitri gritted, “You’re a fucking earworm, I swear!”

“You don’t get to talk to him,” Natalia growled back.

“God, Natalia. You go to space and find John Crichton’s monster to fuck around with? You’re insatiable,” His voice became a purr. “You look like a goddamn warrior queen right now. I’m having a hard time staying focused, but yes, your son is here.”

It took Natalia several seconds to respond, her facial expression went on a journey. 

“I don’t care,” her voice shook. Scorpius saw the lie in her aura. She cared deeply. “He’ll be your son until you’re dead. Then I’ll have to see if he wants a monster for a mother.”

Dimitri chuckled and shook his head.

“You’re incredible, Dva. My memories of you are ghosts compared to the real thing. I’m aching to fight you. Truly. If you win... I suppose I’ll die,” Dimitri smirked, “that’s an interesting gamble for me. But there appears to be no convincing you. If you must, come at me.”

Natalia exhaled slowly, centering herself. Her eyes were closed for a single second before she charged forward. She flicked her fader on as she made contact. Dimitri’s eyes wildly darted around the room at her fractured distortions. Her fist collided with his face. He staggered away. His coughing became laughter.

“Fuck’s sake, Natalia!”

She struck him again in the jaw and kneed him in the guts. He fell into a defensive position with a trail of blood running from his mouth. His eyes flicked around the room at her fader’s copies.

“You found the fix to your speed problem, I see. Too bad it’s all tech and not skill,” Dimitri taunted smoothly. Her next strike he blocked with his forearm. He countered with a punch but struck through a faded version. She backhanded him. 

Dimitri crowded her, which was the only way to block her strikes effectively and to avoid her glitching faders. Still, Natalia countered most of his attacks successfully, as soon as she stepped away from him, she was in a better position to hurt him back, which she did, efficiently. His left eye was swollen black and his nose broken after only a few rounds of counter-attacks. Natalia had dislocated two fingers that she reseated and had taped mid-fight. 

In the latest bout, Natalia had slammed him in the solar plexus and he had rolled away to wheeze miserably. He slumped against a wall to catch his breath. Natalia prowled at a distance, cracking her neck, and staying warm with quick foot movements.

Scorpius was unhappy with the amount of time Natalia was giving Dimitri to recover, but he couldn’t fault her for toying with him a little. He could only imagine her anger. It must be many times richer than his own. He’d only witnessed her abuse through tertiary means, Natalia was the direct victim. But Natalia wasn’t smiling, she appeared in pain as she raged against Dimitri, even as she won.

“You’ve definitely improved,” heaved Dimitri from his support on the wall, “I’ll grant you that.”

“I wasn’t in space twiddling my thumbs,” gnashed Natalia.

“A cage fighter is what I heard,” Dimitri grimaced as he leaned forward, “I wish I could’ve seen you.”

Natalia slammed her heel into his jaw. She tried again but he caught her and flipped her onto the hard ground. He slammed a kick down on her prone form but she rolled away and up to standing. Her fader suit sent versions of her around the room like a glitch on a screen. Dimitri was slowly figuring out the visual trick, his punches and jabs were hitting more often. On Natalia’s next strike, he caught her fist in his armpit. She countered with her other hand, but he caught that too.

“Seriously, Natalia. Are you really capable of killing me?” he spoke breezily inches from her snarling face. “I think you crave my attention. What would your life be like without me?” His lips grazed hers. She flinched, her face pinched in disgust.

“Less afraid,” She growled and kneed him in the balls.

He pooled to the ground, hunched over.

“Mercy,” he wheezed, “you plan on beating me to death.”

“If you end up sterile, I might be satisfied,” Natalia’s gold tooth glinted sharply.

He smirked through his pain. “Doubt it.” Dimitri peeled up to standing after a breath. “Alright, come at me again.”

But Scorpius on the sidelines of the fight witnessed Dimitri’s sleight of hand. He’d drawn something out of his sleeve. An item that looked very similar to an autoinjector.

Scorpius snarled as he jetted forward into the fight, snatching Dimitri’s wrist.

Dimitri caught Scorpius back. Natalia startled at first but now catching sight of the auto-injector, rushed at Dimitri to disarm him. Suddenly, Dimitri’s heel slipped.

The three of them toppled out the broken window. 

Thankfully, the building on this side was glass and sloped, but in the brisk winter air, it was coated in ice. Dimitri and Scorpius slipped quickly down the surface disappearing from sight, but Natalia’s fader suit caught on a spear of sharp rebar. 

She tried her best to untangle herself but the space technology was more durable than normal fabric. It wouldn’t tear, and she struggled to find leverage to lift herself off the bar. Eventually, she wedged her legs down against the lower level’s glass windows to tug at her caught sleeve. She struggled as her feet failed to find purchase on the slick sheet below her. Finally, with a quick yank, she pulled free, only to fall hard against the glass. Instead of sliding off, the glass shattered under her tail bone and she dropped through the hole.

Natalia was dumped into the dark bowels of the building.

Her head was ringing when she woke. She must’ve hit her head. When she looked up at the hole with fuzzy eyes, it was an impressive fall. 

“Scorpius?” Natalia asked through the comm, but there was no response. 

She hoped she wasn’t out too long or that Scorpius wasn’t injured. The room around her was furnished and lit with a desk light. A tablet was glowing blue on a chair next to an open textbook. Snow wisped in from the hole in the glass above her. 

Natalia fumbled on her belt for the vital tracker but didn’t find it with her hands. She looked down and realized it was missing. Immediately she sought her makarov, but it was gone too. They must’ve been lost in the fall. She swallowed hard and looked to the door to escape.

There was a young man staring back. His black eyes were wide in shock but otherwise, he looked like a Dimitri clone that had forgone his suit for sweats and a teeshirt. He was slightly taller with dark eyes and a flop of brown hair a teenager would have a hard time keeping under control.

Natalia’s insides churned with need.

“Mom?” he whispered, disbelieving. 

“Dimitri.” Her tears began to fall instantly.

Dimitri II dropped the glass of water he was holding and surged forward into Natalia’s arms. Natalia exploded into happy tears. Her fingers brushed into his brown hair. She held him tightly back and sobbed with reckless relief.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” Dimitri gasped through his own cries. “Dad said you were coming back for years. I stopped believing him after a while.”

“I’m here. I’m here,” Natalia picked his face up so she could see him better. He was perfect. Exactly what she imagined in her dreams, even as his face was crumpled together in tearful happiness. “But you aren’t mad at me?”

He smiled back at her and shook his head in her hands. 

“I love you, mom. I missed you. I wish you didn’t leave. Every day I wish you stayed.” 

Natalia gasped back another wracking sob. She pressed her son’s cheek back to her chest in a tight embrace. Natalia was soaring, she was so happy. There was not a moment she had spent preparing herself for a reunion like this. It was beyond her limited imagination that her son wanted to see her after all these years gone, that he thought about her in any kind of positive light after she abandoned him to escape her husband. The last time she had seen the boy was the night she was recaptured by Dimitri and tied to a chair. How did she appear to a child’s eyes then? What were his memories of that moment?

“You’re gonna stay right?” Dimitri peeped wetly from his spot on her breast.

“No, I can’t,” Natalia murmured softly. “I can’t.”

Dimitri jerked in her arms. “Why not!”

Natalia attempted to bow his head back against her. She sobbed from the loss of him and at his angry eyes.

“It’s not safe for me, please. Your father…” Natalia pleaded, “he hurts me very badly.”

“No, no, no,” Dimitri shook his head furiously, “he can be better! He loves you. He loves me!”

Natalia grit her teeth in pain. Her arms still open for him to return to her. She took a step forward. Dimitri Junior moved back.

“Get away from him,” The command was calmly spoken. Natalia’s head swiveled around to the door, her eyes panicked. It was her bioloid clone. The Bioloid Natalia held a slowly beeping vital tracker and her blaster was pointed at Dimitri Junior.

“No!” Natalia screeched. She shielded the boy against her clone. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you. He’s real!”

“He’s not, Natalia. He’s a bioloid.” Her duplicate responded quietly. 

“No! No! No!” Natalia covered her ears and whipped around at her son. “You’re real, and I’m going to protect you.”

But her son’s eyes were now filled with fear. He fought frantically against her gripping hands. Natalia didn’t want to hurt him, but he was furiously trying to throw her off. 

“Please stay with me,” Natalia begged, “You’re real. I know you’re real. I’ll protect you, but you need to trust me.”

“You’re crazy!” Dimitri struggled against her. “Let go of me!” He threw her off.

The bioloid’s gun fired.

Natalia’s gasp was strangled. Dimitri Junior’s eye was blown open revealing a shivering mass of tubing. The hole smoked as he began to sink down the wall. Natalia wailed miserably and caught him in her arms. She sobbed against his shoulder, petting his head, as she melted to the floor. Natalia shuddered in grief until she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s alright. It’ll be okay,” the bioloid cooed.

Natalia snapped her teeth. Grabbed the hand, and broke it in several places. The clone staggered back with her destroyed limb as the original carefully set her son’s body on the floor and stood. She was coiled forward with rage and menace.

“Natalia?” The bioloid muttered with worry.

Natalia howled as she attacked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri's word Воля (pronounced Volya) is often translated to the English word ‘will’ or ‘free-will’ but it’s more complicated than that. It means "unbounded, almost anarchic freedom – the sense of liberty that you might feel in a place of vast, natural beauty."
> 
> I like this word as a turret lock passcode because it’s cruelly ironic.


	23. At Tension: Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll ready? Ya'll ready for the final confrontation!? After this, there is one last full chapter of 3 parts! I hope you're excited.

#  At Tension

##  Part 3

Dimitri and Scorpius gained speed quickly as they slid down the building’s glass side until being thrown roughly onto the outdoor promenade below. A vital tracker and Natalia’s gun skidded after them. Unfortunately, after a brief flight through the air, the vital tracker shattered on the hard pavement. However, the makarov clattered to the ground, unharmed. Although dazed, Scorpius had the sense to scramble for it, but Dimitri scooped it up first. 

Dimitri had Scorpius at gunpoint. They waited a breath for Natalia to appear, but she never did. Based on the building's strange, undulating structure, Scorpius was unable to see the hole they fell from. Where Natalia went was a mystery.

“Natalia?” Scorpius growled into the comm, but there was no answer.

Natalia must be in Dimitri’s safe room or possibly injured. He needed a better viewpoint. Scorpius scanned the area covertly as he continued to be under Dimitri’s scrutiny and gunpoint. From the corner of his eye, Scorpius could see the break in the glass where the turret and the bioloid had entered Dimitri’s apartment. The tank scrambled up from the construction zone on angled cement and I-beams. Scorpius's visual measurement of the hole told him it was a few hundred motras away. 

“Guess it’s just you and me…” Dimitri’s lips curled. He snapped the safety on the gun and slipped it into his pocket. “How exciting.”

Scorpius mentally prepared for a brawl. Dimitri was a skilled fighter with more practice than he, but Scorpius was half-scarran, his strength and pain tolerance were incredibly high in comparison. 

Dimitri smiled at him, a cat’s sharp, hungry grin. His lower face was painted in blood from his broken nose, but he carried his wounds like they were nothing. 

“I know what you’re thinking, and I’ve prepared for it,” Dimitri glimmered through his false charm as a pair of metal claws snapped out of his sleeves and melded to his knuckles. The gloves made his fists steely.

Scorpius scowled. As if it wasn't enough with the fall and losing track of Natalia, Dimitri’s gauntlets were another unfortunate turn of events.

Dimitri charged forward. His arms were wide as he slammed them together where Scorpius’s face was moments before. Scorpius darted towards the hole the turret had made, but Dimitri was fast behind. His offensive was fierce, focused mainly on the broadest movements to render the most powerful strikes with his metal fists. A dodged attack would crack cement, shatter tile, and explode glass. 

Scorpius dodged what he could because a successful block sent vibrations into his dense bones that rattled his teeth. Scorpius was focused primarily on retreat. Direct confrontation with Dimitri wasn’t his motivation for being here, and it was obviously what Dimitri wanted, which highlighted a trap Scorpius didn’t wish to fall into.

“What’s it going to take to get you angry?” Dimitri seethed happily as he beat Scorpius back towards the hole in the building’s shell. They had hopped onto the angled cement and steel structure avoiding the turret’s old beaten footprints, as these crumbled inward. “Why won’t you fight?” 

After many bouts of avoidance, Scorpius barrelled into the shelled and collapsed apartment. The turret had caused terrible destruction on the first floor. There were flickering lights, but mostly darkness. The stairs were destroyed. The ceiling around them was caved in. He’d have to find a different way to get back to the safe room. Unfortunately, Dimitri was behind him. There was no way to search the premises until Dimitri was neutralized. Scorpius was cornered into fighting.

“Stuck like a rat in a trap,” Dimitri was relentless. He threw a haymaker at Scorpius’s temple which Scorpius blocked with two forearms. Scorpius snapped his palm into Dimitri’s broken nose. It jetted blood. Dimitri licked his lips to clean the crud from his mouth moments before slamming his fist into Scorpius’s ribs.

Scorpius head-butted him while he regained his breath from his impacted lung. Dimitri stuttered back in a daze as Scorpius advanced forward. He cracked his forehead against Dimitri’s again, but this time, Dimitri fell. It was a false victory. The human kicked out his foot right into Scorpius’s knee. He spun up drowsily and punched the joint again with his metal-encased fist. It cracked miserably. Scorpius hissed against the pain and wobbled back. 

Unfortunately, the hit made Scorpius immediately lose his temper. Fury-driven strength surged through him, and while his knee likely needed medical attention, he forgot the pain like the wound was a passing dream. Scorpius slammed his fists down on Dimitri, who quickly rolled out of attack range. Scorpius growled and stalked his retreat. Dimitri staggered to standing. He used the broken terrain to dodge around Scorpius’s bludgeoning attacks. Scorpius heaved the rubble out of his way toward the faltering human.

Dimitri was unable to land another punch on Scorpius until he was cornered near a bank of pipes and broken cement. Scorpius gnashed his teeth at the man. While he originally wanted Natalia to be the one to finish her husband, he was thirsty for his blood and demise as well. Natalia would surely be pleased to learn Dimitri was dead when Scorpius eventually found her. His hands surged for the man’s neck.

But Dimitri ducked under him. Scorpius turned to pummel the man to submission again, but his arm caught. He tried again in his fury to pursue the man prone on the ground, but once again, his assault was snagged. Scorpius snarled as he turned to address the issue. His neck was tethered to a pipe and his arm was tangled in a barely-discernible electrostatic web. He snapped back at Dimitri, who was slowly returning to standing. Yanking at the tangle to get loose only made it constrict harder around Scorpius's neck. When he realized he was trapped, Scorpius’s temper dissolved quickly. 

Dimitri was smiling again, and even though the grime that covered his face, it would be difficult to forget that condescending expression if Scorpius ever freed himself from this trap. Dimitri’s fists descended on him. He was brutal, aiming strictly for Scorpius’s face and abdomen. When Scorpius considered his barrage completed, Dimitri would set in for another round. At the fourth or fifth set of strikes, Dimitri stood from kneeling and spit on Scorpius’s beaten face.

“Thank you,” Dimitri’s breath was ragged, “I haven’t felt such satisfaction from a fight in a long time.”

Scorpius snorted in disgust and scowled through his split lip.

“A sore loser, I see. I’m not surprised.” Dimitri withdrew the makarov from his pocket and checked its load. “But as I said, at the end of this, you’ll die.”

Blood dribbled out of Scorpius’s mouth as he wheezed around a broken rib. Dimitri crowded him for a microt to wrestle the comm out of his ear hole.

“Natalia,” Dimitri cooed into the device, “if you can hear this. I have Scorpius, and I’m going to blow his brains out in...oh...let’s say five minutes. Then I’m coming to find you.” He dropped the comm whimsically. 

Anger glimmered through Scorpius’s blue eyes.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her. She’ll be happy again. I swear it. You can count on me,” Dimitri smirked.

“Why?” Scorpius seethed, “why do you want someone like Natalia? She hates you.”

“Because she’s perfect. She’s so hard to control.” A wistful expression crossed Dimitri's face. “There is nothing sweeter in this world than to control the uncontrollable. It’s all that matters.”

“And her children?”

“I love my children, Scorpius,” Dimitri shrugged, “but it’s different, You wouldn’t understand.”

Scorpius scoffed. It made his ribs ache. He was tired of humans implying he wouldn’t understand simple concepts. Trapped, his eyes scanned the destroyed landscape. Since entering the building and now, night had fallen. Without functional lights, this level would intermittently sink into blackness only to be reilluminated periodically with flickering circles of ceiling lights. In one moment, a well of light failed, but when it turned back on, Natalia was standing in it’s glow. Her face was shadowed, and she wasn’t putting weight on one leg. She must’ve descended a hidden staircase since the primary entry was destroyed.

“I’m here, Dimitri,” she murmured sadly, “I got your message.” 

“Good,” Dimitri jerked the gun at Scorpius's chest and fired.

Scorpius groaned as the bullet penetrated through his armor into his chest. More blood and spittle leaked from his lip corner. He wheezed. 

For a single second, Dimitri smirked with mirth, but then he squinted into the light well toward Natalia.

“Wait a second, you’re not Natalia.”

In the burst of shuddering light from the ruined fixtures and electrical shorts, her destroyed jaw and eye socket were revealed. This Natalia was a bioloid.

But in the microt it took to recognize the false Natalia, something struck Dimitri on the back of the head. He staggered at the blow, drew back bloody fingertips when he examined it.

Natalia stepped out of the shadows wearing the Neural Net Oppressor. It was lost when the living room collapsed. She must’ve recovered it from the debris. The crown was lit with red diodes and she was holding one end of the spinal tap in her fist.

“Hello, Dimitri,” Dimitri muttered, disbelieving. Natalia was speaking through him. Then he grit his teeth as if trying to resist.

“You know that won’t do any good,” Natalia surmised from her own mouth. Her eyes were closed. She was looking through Dimitri’s eyes, who were irate. “God your mind is... Bad. A terrible place.” She shivered.

Dimitri’s possessed body shuddered as well.

“Release him,” Natalia commanded and Dimitri pressed a button on his metal gauntlets. Scorpius’s trapped limbs were freed but he sunk further into himself. It was difficult to sit upright with his wounds. He sucked in a full breath as best as he could through broken ribs. With that completed, Natalia pressed onward.

“Tell me you’re sorry.” 

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri ground out.

“Good,” Natalia responded. She willed his hand to lift the Makarov. It moved shakily up to his chin. He was resisting heavily against her control, but he wasn’t able to escape her guidance. She sighed out, “Now die.”

Dimitri fired. It blew through his skull. He toppled over with a heavy thud, but Natalia followed. She collapsed backward. The neural net oppressor fell from her head.

Scorpius slowly unwound himself before dragging himself over to Natalia’s prone form and lifted her into his lap. Her eyes were closed but she had a pulse.

“Natalia,” his voice was thick and gravely. It hurt to breathe. He rubbed her cheek with his thumb. “You’re not really dead. Wake up.” 

Natalia roused slowly. Her eyes roamed under her lids before they flickered open.

“You were shot,” she whispered.

“He missed everything vital,” Scorpius murmured back.

Natalia smiled weakly and put her hand on the other side of his chest. His scarran heart pounded away under her palm. 

“I know where your heart is.”

“I hope you never have reason to assassinate me then,” he smiled slightly at her.

“Is he dead?” Natalia turned serious.

“Yes.”

She jerked out of his arms and stood to witness Dimitri’s unmoving body. Natalia scanned his corpse, his rolled-back eyes, his thick arterial blood, broken skull. He was a ruin. She immediately dropped to a crouch over him. Then she dug around in his pant’s pockets to draw out his wallet, a silver case of cigarettes, and a lighter. Her searching hand hesitated for a moment before she brought out a pill bottle filled with golden capsules. There was a heavy pause before Natalia’s bioloid took them from her and threw them into the apartment’s darkness. 

The bioloid then stepped back, as Natalia shook off the strange resurfacing symptoms of addiction. Instead, she lit one of Dimitri’s cigarettes while squatting in the rubble next to his body.

She flipped open his wallet as she exhaled smoke. The cash she left alone but the photo accordion she sorted through. The first picture was of her and Dimitri, but the second was Dimitri Jr as a teenager. He wore a school uniform, and his unruly hair was parted with gel. She slipped this picture out but placed the rest of the wallet in her pocket.

Scorpius could hear a helicopter approaching.

“Natalia, we need to go.”

She nodded sharply. Her eyes were distant. 

“Would you like to see my son?” Natalia offered him the picture.

Scorpius didn’t particularly care, but he agreed. He glanced at it quickly. To him, the child was the spitting image of Dimitri except the youth had Natalia’s dark eyes and a hint of her warmth in his face. He was in his mid-teens now.

“Natalia—”

“I heard you the first time,” she snapped, but then swallowed around her emotions, pushing them down. 

Natalia and her bioloid aided Scorpius to a construction elevator, and from there, descended the building. It was a challenge to escape the police. The bioloid offered to be a distraction so that Natalia and Scorpius could slink past the police vehicles. Once outside the perimeter, Natalia called Annika. The older Russian women picked them up from their hunkered spot several blocks away.

There was a brief second, Natalia considered waiting for the bioloid’s return. She glanced back at the flashing police sirens in the distance. If the bioloid continued to exist after this night, Natalia wished her well. Hopefully, they’d never meet again. She got in the car and was shuttled away.

Scorpius was in rough shape and was unable to make it up the stairs. Natalia splayed him out in the office behind the bar. Removing the bullet was the first priority. Natalia helped him out of his armor. She pressed a clean towel to the weeping wound.

“What organ do you actually have here anyway?” Natalia asked as she prepared her setup.

“The scarran heat gland resides there. Mine thankfully is nonfunctional.” 

“That’s good, but this will be the hard part,” Natalia still looked morosely dim as she reached for the tweezers and searched for the slug in Scorpius’s chest cavity. Scorpius stiffened. “It’s deep. Normally a bullet passes through at that distance.”

“I have tough skin.” He said thickly.

Natalia sighed. It pained her to see him like this. The tweezers pinched the expended bullet. She dragged it up slowly. Scorpius ground his molars. With one final twist, the chunk of metal was pulled free, and she staunched the remaining trail of blood.

He sighed heavily. 

“Pity. I was almost starting to enjoy it.”

She snorted and dropped the bullet into his open hand. 

“That’s yours. Keep it for the memories.” With the blood a trickle now, she filled the wound with bacta gel from a syringe and finished it off with a patch. “All better. I’d give you a sweet if I had one.”

Scorpius was looking warmly at her now. Even though his bruised and battered face, his eyes held a recognizable heavy-lidded gaze of regard and affection. Natalia looked away.

“The rest we can do back on the ship,” Scorpius’s eyes tracked after her. They pinched with concern. “I will call my aide. You have no qualms about him coming to Moscow now correct?”

“I don’t,” Natalia took a filling breath, “but I’m not going with you.”

Scorpius’s eyes jerked up to meet hers. “What reason would you have to stay here?”

Natalia sat heavily next to Scorpius. She brought out Dimitri’s wallet in her hand. The picture of Dimitri II was lying on top from the time in the megastructure. For being a small paper picture, she held it with the gentle pinch of an invaluable, precious object. The wallet was abandoned, left open, on the desk. 

“I need to find him,” Natalia’s voice was barely a whisper, almost a whimper.

“Ah, that’s no matter. I will help you.” Scorpius reasoned quickly.

“I need to do it alone.”

Scorpius frowned.

“Then I will wait for you until you are done,” he countered again.

“Scorpius…” Natalia rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“Natalia?” Scorpius spoke with trepidation. His eyes flickered over her like whatever was causing this hiccup was something that physically ailed her.

“I can’t be with you right now. I don’t…” Natalia gasped back a sob. She wasn’t going to cry again today. She wasn’t! “While I’ve been caught up with Dimitri...and with you... it’s like I forgot I was a mother. ”

Panic surfaced in her eyes but they began to water from behind with a flowing, creeping pain. Her voice settled, “I saw my son back there in Dimitri’s apartment.”

She swallowed roughly, trying to keep her throat free of emotional blockage.

“It wasn’t really him. It was a bioloid, but he said...some things that I really wish were possible. Up until that moment, I hadn’t considered how much his possible forgiveness meant to me.” Her eyes hollowed out like two empty wells in thought. They refilled slowly, “I need time to do this properly. I need to refocus on myself and my family because I’ve been away from them. Distracted. I’ve been very bad.”

“Those are simple requests, Natalia, but what does it have to do with me? I will hardly prevent you from seeing your children again.”

“I told you this wasn’t going to be a happy ending, Scorpius!” Natalia cracked violently. “You dragged me here to kill my husband for what? For me? And I came with you, and like with everything around Dimitri, I forgot myself. I forgot what was important to me. Now I see the opportunity to recover what I thought was lost, but you? Why are you here? You came all this way to simply punish a  _ bad _ man? I can’t believe that.”

Scorpius thought this was obvious.

“So you can be with me again without fear of being captured,” he offered it in layman's terms. “I want you to be with me, Natalia,” he offered huskily as an additional point. 

Natalia huffed in exasperation. “I suppose you think I should find that romantic! You sound exactly like Dimitri right now! Obsessive! Only thinking of yourself! I don’t want someone hanging over me, breathing down my neck, to hurry up and focus on them again.”

Scorpius’s eyes went wide even around the bruising. He didn’t have a response for that, his mouth gaped open for a second. 

“A cruel comparison,” he hissed bitterly, “I am not  _ like _ Dimitri.”

“I’m sorry that was mean of me,” Natalia recanted. She rubbed her face trying to banish her ill emotions. “I’m thankful. Eternally thankful to you. I couldn’t have...If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have this chance to see my son. I would still be running from Dimitri forever and never looking back. I want to go with you, but…”

“But?” A pain was building in Scorpius around the bullet wound. It was making his heartthrob with fear.

She shook her head sadly.

“If I do, I won’t know who I am,” Natalia pleaded softly. A smile failed to bloom on her face. “Let me leave. You’ll always be important to me. Someday I might come back.” 

“When?” Scorpius rasped.

Natalia once again shook her head, “you aren’t listening to me, I don’t know…”

“I can’t promise I’ll wait for your return,” he said without a hint of emotion. As if he wanted to add an insult or a period to the statement he dropped the bullet Natalia had pressed into his hand moments before. It landed dully on the wooden desk.

Natalia jerked as if slapped. 

“Yes, of course not,” Her hands slipped from his shoulders. She collected the bullet like it was a diamond and moved away teasing it in her palm. The moments stretched as she sought something more to say. Scorpius’s face kept pinching in anger, or possibly confusion. This wasn’t how Natalia wanted to leave.

“Do you think there is a planet out there like Tel Aviv?” she tried to sound as light-hearted as she could given the circumstances, but it sounded pitched instead.

“Likely,” his response was hollow.

Natalia seemed to be chewing on her next words. She had her hand on the door. Her eyes were down, cloudy and damp like a rainstorm. 

“Why…?” Scorpius struggled around the syllable, “at the boxing club? Why did you agree to live with me at all?” Scorpius couldn’t drag his eyes from her. He desperately wanted her to return to his side, but she was retreating instead. 

Natalia glanced up sharply, but then catching his gaze, she looked away as if caught in a lie.

“I liked talking to you. You were fun, and I was...lonely. I get lonely sometimes. I thought maybe… that I was safe, safe to be with you, and for a time I was. Did you feel the same?”

Scorpius clenched every muscle in his jaw to resist answering. His hands curled into fists as an added barrier, but he said nothing. Natalia filled in the air.

“I’ll always lov—”

“Don’t say it,” Scorpius hissed in panic, “don’t say it now.”

She gulped it back. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Scorpius spit.

She opened the door, unable to exist under his analytical gaze for a second longer. If she didn’t leave now, she might be convinced to stay. His obvious pain was almost enough.

The door clicked as she departed. Scorpius was frozen, chilled to the bone, iced to the desk. He stayed there for microns and microns, simply breathing but mentally willing her to return. When she didn’t, his eyes flickered down to the table and caught Natalia’s eyes gleaming from Dimitri’s open wallet. She was a picture in his billfold. The edges were torn, like it was ripped from a larger picture. The headshot featured Natalia in olive drab, a loose bun, and an unbridled smile. She was grinning into a pink sunset. 

Scorpius plucked the photo out of its plastic slip. He burned holes in it with his eyes before flipping it over. In smudged pencil, there was Natalia’s handwriting.

_ XX Natalia _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harvey: That’s so sad. Alexa, play Tears for Fears’s Head Over Heels.


	24. Go Solo: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE! I'm posting today and not next week! Iterations pressured me to do it. So thank her.

#  Go Solo

##  Part 1

Scorpius watched the boats bob in the canal behind John Crichton’s vacation home. It was a warm night with a humid breeze gushing in from the equator. With the light from the nearby city, the stars were dim despite the sky being clear. Throughout dinner, Scorpius had asked himself multiple times, what he thought he was doing here. He should have left the planet. He should have left the planet days ago. He should never have agreed to eat dinner at John Crichton’s home in Florida. Still, he stubbornly remained, sighing at the boats bobbing in a tropical canal on Earth.

The dinner was tolerable. Crichton’s family normally carried the conversation on their own, and each of his four children was an epicenter of individual drama and complex moods such as D’Argo’s recent romance with a scarran ambassador, which wasn’t going over well with John or Aeryn, or, for example, Zhaan and Leslie competing for attention with the latest success story from their work as a musician and as a writer, respectively. 

Scorpius’s quiet brooding didn’t seem to have any impact on them except for Xhalax, who at first was too jubilant to see Scorpius before becoming sadly curious and finally concerned.

She cornered him after the meal, but as her mouth opened to ask her questions, Scorpius shot her a spaded glare. Xhalax immediately gulped back whatever she was going to say and guiltily offered instead, “is there anything I can do?”

“What reason would you think I require anything from you?” Scorpius sculpted his voice into the very shape of disinterested uncaring. This response apparently scalded Xhalax, who slunk away from him as if whipped. 

Her reaction worsened his mood and while he wanted to abandon the home altogether, he didn’t want anyone to form the opinion he was bowing out of the night because he was emotionally injured. So he escaped onto the empty balcony, which was where he found himself now.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Who or what did this to you, and does it have stock options?”

“I can’t imagine what you mean, John.” The last thing Scorpius needed was John Crichton rooting around in his business. He too was in his late sixties now. His hair was grayed. The lines on his face dug deeply from constant wry amusement. Regardless of the normal lifetime of humans on Earth, John would live for much longer with the advanced medical technology in the Uncharted. He was the same heft and build, and would likely stay that way for perhaps a centurit or two.

“Uh-huh,” John bit his bottom lip and scanned Scorpius with a raised eyebrow, “it’s cute that you think you can still lie to me. So...who is she?”

Scorpius sucked air between his teeth and looked away. 

On second thought, a small glimmer of awareness ran through Scorpius that John’s advice might have been his purpose in coming to dinner in the first place. John was a mind-boggling human too, after all, perhaps if Scorpius explained the situation, John would be able to untangle it for him. Unfortunately, the very idea of speaking to John about this matter filled Scorpius with indignant rage and pain akin to overheating.

John, however, was relentless, stubborn, and stupid. He barreled forward without a care in the world.

“Holy crap! There really is a  _ she _ ? That was just a guess! I can’t believe you’re messed up about a woman right now, and here I thought you were an ice-cold, frozen-hearted bastard convinced everyone was below you.”

“Crichton…” Scorpius seethed like a furnace moments from exploding.

But John’s blue eyes were wickedly excited.

“Is it Anastasia Petrova?”

Scorpius scowled at the landscape, determined not to give John the satisfaction of his affected expression. John plowed ahead.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Who else would be able to convince you to visit a planet while labeled as a big ol’ worm named Scorpion, but someone you liked. Her passport was fake, so she must be into some really interesting shit.”

“What is the purpose of this line of questioning?” Scorpius snapped sharply, his cold eyes swiveled up to glare at Crichton.

John turned serious. “You’re not supposed to be on this planet, Scorpius, and I bet if I called certain people, I’d find out you didn’t  _ come in peace _ either. Interpol has been  _ atwitter _ about you.”

“It’s no matter. Call whoever you’d like. I’ll be gone before they find me.” Scorpius pushed off from the balcony railing and made to leave. If anything that was the motivation he required to escape this lowly planet. John caught his shoulder.

“Seriously, Scorpy, you aren’t special for experiencing lady troubles. We’ve all been there. Why not tell me about it?"

Scorpius spun on his heel and stalked uncomfortably close to John, flattening him back against the banister. 

“There is nothing to discuss! I did everything I could for  _ that woman _ , and she still threw it back in my face like I had done nothing as if all my time and energy were worthless. She should be forgotten, immediately, not dwelled upon. I’ve wasted enough on her, including my attention.”

Crichton laughed in Scorpius’s snarling face.

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” he barked.

“Tch!” Scorpius retreated from him into his default blank expression.

“Feel better?” Crichton tilted his head.

“Irrelevant. Picking apart her or my actions won’t change anything regardless of what you perceive as my  _ mood _ . She’s already a scab. The wound will heal.”

“Uh-huh.” Crichton drawled disbelieving.

“Decates later and yet you remain infuriating,” Scorpius attempted to sound as lofty and above John's idiocy as possible.

“That’s me! Infuriating to the core, but you have to admit, I know a few things about love especially when it comes to humans,” he gestured in a sweep to himself, “and peacekeepers.” He threw a hand to the windows, which Scorpius assumed was Aeryn’s general direction. 

“So if you want some insight into the ups and downs of interspecies relationships between our respective species, now would be a good time to dish.”

In the heated pause that followed, John added as an afterthought, “You can always forget her tomorrow.” 

Scorpius narrowed his eyes at him. 

“And what do I owe for this service you so anxiously wish to provide?”

“Hey! Hey!” Crichton held up his hands as if offended, “I’m a decent guy. What makes you think I want something? Maybe I’m just curious… what kind of woman would do this to you, hmm?”

Scorpius only tightened his glare on him. 

“I think not. Instead, I believe you are hoping to manipulate me into a state of emotional exposure and pardon me, I have something else that requires my focus.” He turned towards the balcony’s doors.

“You’ve come all this way, why not stay and have a drink with me?” John fingered the metal banister like a school girl toeing the dirt while flirting. “We can talk about wormholes. Like old times?”

Scorpius grit his teeth attempting to resist, but it went poorly, his determination to leave one-eightied.

“As if you have anything else to share,” but regardless of his apparent disinterest, Scorpius’s curiosity peaked.

“I might,” John’s lips curled at the edge, “how would you know unless you question me.”

Scorpius was ensnared. His lower lids twitched in suspicion but he absolutely couldn’t leave now.

“One drink, but if you stray one foot in the direction of my personal life, I’m leaving.”

“Scout's honor!” John pledged with his hand up in some Earthen gesture, “let me get the scotch.”

And while John was unable to finagle any more information out of Scorpius about a certain woman named Natalia, listening to John speak about his tumultuous push and pull relationship with Aeryn onboard Moya did give Scorpius a fresh perspective about a moment in John’s life he only understood through Harvey’s memories. It wasn’t rejuvenating or  _ freeing _ or anything of the sort. John was an egregious inaccurate storyteller prone to tangents, but it did give Scorpius something to think about.

John stressed that love was unpredictable and would arise when one least expected it. He was positive that this wouldn’t be the last time Scorpius heard from  _ this woman _ , but whether Scorpius would be willing to accept her return was up to him. John reminded him to be patient, which was insulting, Scorpius was always patient. 

However Scorpius’s main takeaway from the conversation was that perhaps peacekeepers and humans were too different to partner together, and like with anything regarding John Crichton, his relationship with Aeryn was a fluke, a symptom of his ridiculous luck. Scorpius was never so fortunate.

Scorpius left the planet, and for a time, the crew on his yacht had the same curious, invested expressions as Xhalax. It was obvious that his entire staff thought he would be returning with Natalia, and her absence slowly turned their curiosity to concern. Scorpius meanwhile was short-tempered in every, single, interaction. 

Thankfully he could sleep again, perhaps too well. He would fall asleep like his consciousness was a plug that could be pulled from a socket. There were no dreams, just blackness. But waking up was a long, befuddled resurfacing that would take additional time after his alarm, and worse yet, he barely felt rested. 

He returned to his work on uniting the Uncharted, but his motivation to continue was splintered. The week he spent away seemed to have sucked up more mental focus than he thought. Returning to Empress Novia of the Breakaway Colonies caused some kind of mental whiplash that perhaps Natalia was a fever dream and the trip to Earth didn’t happen at all. But the lingering pain from his broken ribs and the aurora chair recordings that remained in his repaired desk console told him otherwise.

Scorpius resisted rewatching them, but he thought about them nearly every arn. Every time the thought of viewing them appeared again in the forefront of his mind, he’d hiss in disgust at his weakness and force the idea away, bury it somewhere else in his subconscious. It was ludicrous to consider rewatching her life as if he could’ve missed something the first time that would explain what happened on Earth after she killed her husband. Nothing would explain her goodbye. 

However as the weeks passed, instead of Scorpius’s resolve strengthening, it dissolved entirely. After one long, listless workday, he returned to his quarters and prepared to lay out on his cot in full armor, but he made one last cursory glance at his console to find a message from John Crichton.

_ Hey Scorp. Thought I’d give you a heads up, but I just shuttled a woman named Natalia Kliger back to the Uncharted. I dropped her on Cirrox in the Jetsom Cluster if you’re interested. Peace, J. _

Scorpius swallowed sharply against his closing throat. The timestamp was several arns ago, plus the message delay. He struggled for microns between ignoring the message entirely or immediately charging to the bridge for a course correction, but his choice was made as he recalled Natalia’s parting words ‘let me leave’. He would not be like  _ Dimitri _ and perpetually chase someone that wanted nothing to do with him. Scorpius shut off the console and settled onto his cot with robotic purpose. He could get past this. He would.

However the following day, he found himself in the simulacrum watching moments in Natalia’s memories. The first ones he watched were her in pain. He returned to her torture in Palestine as if seeing her in agony would soothe his anger against her.

Scorpius watched her miserably sputter for breath in the desert-hot chamber as her face was covered with a damp cloth and water was forced into her airways. She was drenched and shivering with sweat when her captors dragged her upright. Her breath rattled in panic as they asked her question after question she didn’t answer, no matter how wild her eyes got with their threats. They struck her many times and threw her to the dusty, sand-strewn ground. She stayed down, her memories wobbled in and out of consciousness, but then it was time to be waterboarded again, and she would be awake for that from sheer, crackling fear. 

Scorpius was flayed while watching it. He’d replay it again and again without formulating a thought about what he was doing. His brain was off like he was meditating, but on what, he couldn’t say. All he could make out was that he wasn’t angry when he watched her get hurt. He wasn’t satisfied either, far from it. It could be he was the opposite of satisfied… hollowed, unmet, or empty seemed better describers. He listened to her sad wails again as she gurgled water and writhed in her straps. He sat in the corner of the Simulacrum, arms braced on his tented legs, and fell asleep to her torment.

Arns later, he left, groggy and angry beyond belief, promising himself he would never falter again and return to her memories. 

This promise lasted even shorter than his initial resistance. He found himself back in the chamber mere days later skipping to all the moments she genuinely smiled, which was often in her youth. Tel Aviv was full of her bright eyes and grins. This went on for arns, like he was categorizing them all. He exited the simulacrum this time as angry as before but with a dull ache in his ribs and an itch to touch warmth with bare fingers.

Instead, he went to his console and looked up Cirrox in the Jetsom Cluster. It was a crystalline planet covered in ice, not at all like Tel Aviv. Natalia’s destination here could only be explained as the location of Andi, but Scorpius doubted she settled there. Shifting gears, he performed a search for planets in the sector that had desert climates and large bodies of cobalt blue water. He tightened the search for systems with large eclectic cities.

Still, there were several results, and that was in this sector alone among hundreds of others. He scowled heatedly and slumped into his desk chair. How many times would it take before he learned not to chase someone across the uncharted? Natalia didn’t have a ship such as the leviathan, which, while difficult to track, was a unique marker to follow Crichton around. Instead, Natalia was a nondescript woman that looked like a sebaccean, who used public transportation, who didn’t call attention to herself, and who had the means to falsify documents. How could he begin to find her, but more importantly why should he…? He closed down the search program with vehemence. 

Unlike before when Natalia left him, Scorpius’s work failed to arrest his faltering attention. Empress Novia was as stubborn as expected, and the truth was, to Scorpius, uniting the uncharted under one ruling body was no longer appealing. Where once he was optimistic about its eventual possibility, he found only pessimism that it would ever work. The species speckling the territory were too hard-headed and invested in their differences. He would continue to work with the politicians if he became interested again, but he sought other projects. 

Without work crowding his mind, he couldn’t ignore his desires for physical comforts. Whereas in the past, he had been more selective at who he fornicated with, now he took women to bed as soon as he recognized they were interested, which wasn’t particularly common but did widdle away several nights in something akin to pleasant exertion. Unfortunately, he always left afterward with a nasty taste in his mouth and a disinterest in ever seeing the woman again no matter how well she’d struck Natalia from his thoughts for a few arns.

As the months crawled on, Scorpius subdued any unwanted emotion with a vice-like, suffocating grip. He mentally beat his relapses of thinking about Natalia into the recesses of his mind until he returned to the flatline of what he found acceptable, which was blank, observational logic with a hint of scathing, mirthless humor. It helped to recognize that Natalia’s affections were impossible given what he was and ultimately, what would a Peacekeeper want with such silly emotional attachments. It was a weakness Scorpius was glad to be rid of.

Life continued along the path he always expected. He dove into a new project with his normal reckless ambition and single-mindedness. This time working with the Peacekeepers again on creative methods of border control. Everything outside his focus disappeared into unimportance. In this way, he spent almost a cycle from the day he abandoned Earth to the moment he received a message on his console.

_ Hello Scorpius. I hope you read this message before deleting it, but I understand if I don’t deserve a moment more of your time. I promise this will be my only attempt to reconnect. I’ve thought about sending you this message many times but finding the words was hard. There is so much I want to say. It’s been a painful cycle for me. Sometimes I think it would’ve been easier if you were with me, but I needed to walk this path alone, and I have. Still, you were never far from my thoughts. I don’t know what your cycle was like, I won’t insult you by surmising, but I selfishly hope you thought about me, and maybe, if I’m lucky, you still do. If you want, I’d like to speak with you, but if you don’t, I understand and wish you well. XX Natalia. _

Scorpius read the message twice with a level of detachment that would’ve impressed a paraplegic. He closed it and considered deleting it, but deleting it required finding the animosity required to care. Instead, he left it in his message queue and went about his entire working day. Into the evening, he opened it again. Read it several more times until anger twitched at one of his lower eyelids and so, he deleted it.

After a night’s sleep, he retrieved it from destruction but didn’t read it. The entirety of the message he’d memorized. Natalia’s words floated through his cranium like a cloud threatening rain. As he mulled them over, anger would arise first before softening into something akin to hope. He tried to pulverize these desires away like he had for a cycle, but they dissolved through his mental fingers and lingered at the forefront of his mind. 

His interest in work dried up as he began to pick at the message with hyper-fixation. Each sentence he thought about multiple times a day, weighing their meaning against his preconceptions. Perhaps it was some trap, but his instincts weren’t firing in suspicion. Instead, they were swelling excitedly, almost predatory.

Late into the evening arns nearly a week later, Scorpius dug around in his desk. He knew the scrap was somewhere. Several months ago, he’d abandoned it on purpose to be lost in the neatness of his desk organization. After a brief search, his gloved fingers skimmed the strange plastic-coated paper, and he pulled the photo out. Natalia smiled back at him like he was a sunset. He didn’t flip it over to read the writing on the back.

Love was a strange thing. So often he thought he understood its devious, seductive nature, but it kept surprising him like a dagger in the shadows. He could never heal the wound before it struck again, and each time, it seemed to carve deeper with a bittersweet, coaxing pain. He would be gutted one moment and filled sloshing to the brim the next. Scorpius acknowledged there was only one explanation for his inability to shut Natalia out after so long.

His tightly packed emotions were loosening, but this time they were buoyed with optimism. While it had been a week of considered thought, Scorpius finally replied to her message. After all, he was a patient man. She had tried his patience, so he tested hers. He hoped his delay made her squirm. 

A little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also has anyone listened to Hall & Oates H2O while reading this story? Because it's hilarious and iterations hates pop, so I can't giggle about it with her.


	25. Go Solo: Part 2

#  Go Solo

##  Part 2

Scorpius stood outside a small battered restaurant. The plastic signage was sun-baked. It had a brittle quality, like if it was touched it would flake or completely shatter. Most of the handwritten signs in the window were bleached white. They were tacked up a decate ago or more. It was a shuttle restaurant, long and narrow. A commuter would sit along the bar and order burnt stimulates in cracked mugs or slippery meats. Greasy carbohydrates ruled here.

He checked the directions again, not because he thought he was in the wrong place exactly, but to linger on whether he was in the  _ wrong place _ . He couldn’t predict how this meeting would go. The messaging between Natalia and him continued after his initial response to her request to speak again. In a way, it was reminiscent of how they communicated when they first began conversing. As if the last four cycles were erased and they were starting again sometime in the past. It would have been refreshing if he wasn’t so swollen with longing. 

Each of Natalia’s updates was like putting pressure on a bruise. After weeks of nonsequential back and forth she offered her location and an option to meet in person. Scorpius saw the opportunity as a way of ending his renewed ache, but the question of why he opened himself for the ache at all remained unanswered. There was a possibility that their interactions would go nowhere, leaving him back in the hot stew of emotional disturbance. Still, a chance was offered and anyone wishing to gain had to take it.

Scorpius was now at the appointed time and place. A bell chimed as he entered. The restaurant’s interior was decorated in a blue speckled pattern that was popular long before Scorpius’s birth. It had no customers, which given the hour, and the lack of transport ships in the depot, made sense. A heavyset alien with three fleshy limbs leaned against a cooling unit in the back. She wore a frilly apron and was flipping through a glossy periodical. 

“Bout time you came in. I was counting down to the moment I’d have to go out and getcha,” she rumbled from the massy lump lodged in her neck.

Scorpius stood stiffly in the doorway as if caught breaking and entering. 

“You can have a seat. She’s been jittery all day too. She’ll be out in a microt.” Apparently, Scorpius was more interesting than the periodical the woman was reading, because when he sat at the bar, she trundled over on her three legs. “She’s told me about you.”

Scorpius strummed his fingers on the age-stained counter, “And?”

“Haven’t met anyone famous before.” Her little enamel name tag read ‘Doratheen’. “She’s a sweet girl. I’m glad you’re more humble than I expected.”

“Humble in what way?” 

“A war hero with a waitress? People write stories about that ya know.”

“She’s not simply a waitress,” Scorpius corrected her without any harshness. Doratheen shrugged as if she’d heard Scorpius’s tone too many times before and his or anyone's assessment was worth little. Recognizing his statement was irrelevant to the waitress, Scorpius moved on. ‘You strike me as a woman that reads those stories.”

“Aye. I do, and if any of them are accurate, I gotta say you have nothing to worry about.” A massive wrinkle over one of her eyes drooped. Scorpius realized she winked at him.

“Doratheen! How do I look— oh.” Natalia appeared from the back room with her hands buried in her hair. She locked eyes with Scorpius, and they got marginally wider. 

“Time's up, sugar.” Doratheen’s vocal lump vibrated warmly. 

“Hi. I didn’t keep you long, did I?” Natalia wore a floral dress with thin straps. Her hair had grown out. It floated in dark waves to her chin. She appeared touched by the sun, golden on the shoulders and knees.

Scorpius didn’t think much about what he said next, trapped in Natalia’s radiant glow. 

“A cycle.”

“Oh, yes. Right.” She blushed brightly and looked away to recoup. When she looked back a microt later, she was smiling, “Shall we go?”

Scorpius followed her dumbly, already adrift in a strange swell of emotions.

For two blocks they clipped each other’s sentences like stepping on heels. Then a long silence followed. Scorpius was no good at this. He opted for internally chastising himself that he shouldn’t have come, but how could he have chosen to never see Natalia again? He didn’t want to stop looking at her even though he was trying as furtively as possible.

At the end of the block, there was a breaker wall bordering an aquamarine coast. It went on for the length of the city with little embankments of sand and stairs down to the lapping water. Single-family fishing canoes bobbed in clusters like islands. Some of them were playing jilted music. A peaceful laziness hovered around the aliens working the nets.

The star the planet orbited was bright. It would be hot if not for the breeze blowing off the sea.

“It’s actually a river,” Natalia read his mind. “A long time ago this planet was terraformed and they built a straight channel from one pole to another. This was a glacier until the star became a giant, now it’s quite tropical. It reminds me of the Ganges.”

“What about Tel Aviv?” The coastline looked like the city from her memories.

“Yes, it also reminds me of Tel Aviv,” she sighed into the wind. “What do you think?”

He scanned the blue horizon but came right back to Natalia’s dark eyes and nervous smile. 

“It’s pleasant.”

She grinned at him, but then smothered it. 

“I’m glad you’re here. I admit I didn’t think you’d want to see me again. I thought...” her eyes drifted down and she fiddled with the hem of her short dress, “I had taken too long.”

Scorpius hummed in thought, but was unwilling to admit, he was surprised himself. It could be he was becoming mentally weaker as he aged. But she furtively glanced at him from under her long lashes, and Scorpius’s guts churned. He shifted.

“As you see, I am here,” he was absolutely not equipped for this, “it was a challenging cycle.”

“You’re not working on the territory's unity anymore,” Natalia stated with interest.

“Ah,” Scorpius’s eyes flitted to the distant blue of the river again, “no. I reasoned it might not be possible to achieve unity, nor was it something desirable.”

It was Natalia’s turn to hum thoughtfully. 

“I spoke to Darvek. Remember Darvek? He mentioned you left.”

A pang shot through Scorpius. 

“Union President Darvek…” he muttered. Natalia was speaking of their old mutual acquaintance from Statu Grandu. Scorpius had not thought of that name for some time. It bothered him that Natalia had spoken to Darvek while Scorpius was denied her attention.

“Yes, he said the movement lacked momentum once you left,” Natalia glimmered at him.

“A compliment,” Scorpius’s eyebrow quirked in surprise. Darvek was never a man that shined praise on Scorpius. “But I don’t particularly want to speak about that.”

Natalia’s head bobbed in agreement, but then her smile dropped sharply. Her thoughts went somewhere hard and painful as her face changed from gleaming to shaken. She leaned against the breaker wall’s banister with her sights in the distance. 

“I tracked down my son.”

There wasn’t a doubt in Scorpius’s mind that she would be unable to fulfill that quest. He waited for her to go on as he drew his focus away from the horizon and back to her. 

“He was at a boarding school in St. Petersburg. It wasn’t easy to speak to him. Interpol was looking for me, and my son, Dimitri, was under surveillance. It took time, and I didn’t want...to appear threatening.” Her voice creaked with rawness. 

“When I finally got him alone, he was cold towards me, which...I expected. He knew I killed his father from Interpol. He was upset and angry with me. I visited him intermittently over several weeks. Each time I met with him...was different. I’m not sure, even now, I made any progress with him. It was bittersweet. He’s alive and doing as well as he could be...given the circumstances. My husband was...not a good father either.” Natalia swallowed dryly. 

“Still. I am in contact with him now. It’s barely anything, but life is long. Maybe someday…” she whispered almost desperately in a kind of prayer. Her eyes were cloudy with emotion. “Maybe someday he’ll forgive me and want me to be part of his life.”

Her chest rose and fell like being constricted.

“Is that what you want to talk about?” Her focus slid back to him like the tide.

Scorpius tilted his head. “I was curious, but I don’t believe you want my condolences.”

Natalia snorted sharply like the idea of Scorpius comforting anyone was laughable. “Never Scorpius, I will never want your condolences.” She shook her head, “How can a liar also be too honest?”

“Easily,” Scorpius simpered. “I have no reason to lie to you...anymore.”

“Yes, I believe we’re long past that. We were both good liars, for a time.” Her crooked smile bit into her cheeks. It was wry and sharp. Her pain still lingered on her lips, but her cloudy vision cleared. “You’ve seen too much of the real me now. You’d know the difference.”

“Hmm, possibly. I’m sure there is more to see.”

There was a pause. Natalia was sizing him up, seeking out his intentions. The thoughts about her son were sinking below the surface of her mind.

“Is that an invitation?” Natalia’s response was paced as if she wasn’t entirely sure. Her hand was less than a dench away from Scorpius’s on the banister. 

Scorpius wasn’t going to miss a second opportunity to take her hand. The thought of missing the moment in the restaurant haunted him the last cycle. He covered her long fingers with his own gloved palm like he was pinning her into close proximity. Afterward, he changed the topic.

“You left Earth with John Crichton.”

Natalia smirked crookedly and brushed her flyaway hair behind her ear.

“Strangely, yes. I knew if I wanted to get off Earth, I would need to bargain onto a leaving ship,” she shook her head in disbelief. “The news mentioned Crichton’s departure. I thought I didn’t have a chance to reach him, but I sent him a message referencing that I knew his daughter, Xhalax. To my surprise, he replied. He was very easy to convince.”

“He knew of you beforehand. He uncovered your existence not long after we separated.” Scorpius thought about the dinner after Dimitri’s death. Originally, he wished he had been more careful about what he had spoken of during that time, but then...would Natalia be here now? Or still, trapped on the distant planet?

“I figured. He thought the trade for his services was that I would divulge every thought I ever possessed about you.” She chuckled lightly, “He’s a very funny man. Also...a moron. Not what I expected.”

Scorpius’s dark lips curled. Natalia was always infinitely pleasing. He had forgotten or hidden that fact far away in his mind. 

“I told him nothing. If you were worried. He was very disappointed in me,” Natalia moved marginally closer to him.

“As I expected you would. You are very hard to pressure for information.”

“Mmm,” she fingered the edge of his breastplate.

“And Andromeda?” Scorpius refocused on what had initially driven Natalia away from him. He needed to know that the factor of separation wasn’t a problem now.

“She missed me. I can’t begin to describe to you the feeling of leaving one child that was so mad at me to be met with another child that was so eager and excited to see me. I thought I would die from happiness on the spot. I couldn’t stop crying, and she was perfect. Nothing bad happened to her. The family that watched her said she wasn’t doing particularly well in school, but that changed when I came back. I shouldn’t have left her that long,” Natalia summarized as if a weight was taken off her shoulders. She practically glimmered in the sun. 

“I’m so thankful for Andi. She’s the damn godsend I never deserved.” Her focus flickered from the distance back to Scorpius. “She was obviously curious about you.”

“Oh?” Scorpius murmured. “What did you tell her about your time away?”

“I told her the truth. She said you were a better father than Dimitri could be,” Natalia continued to trace the individual hard scales of Scorpius’s breastplate. It was a bit distracting, her words almost didn’t sink in. Scorpius’s eyes snapped to hers.

“Don’t panic,” Natalia laughed. “Do not panic.”

“I am not panicking,” Scorpius corrected, “it is simply unexpected. I did not think I made an impression on Andi at all.”

“Why not? Xhalax thinks highly of you,” Natalia countered.

“Xhalax is an oddity.”

Natalia murmured knowingly, “Maybe.”

Scorpius grumbled in response. He wasn’t sure what to make of Andi comparing him to a father. It hadn’t crossed his mind during the last cycle, but perhaps back when they lived together, he considered the conundrum of being a child’s father figure even when he never elected to be one.

Natalia interrupted his thoughts.

“What do you know of Scarrans and love?”

Scorpius blinked at her. “What?”

“There isn’t a lot of information on it. I can’t read written Scarran, and the few I asked either went into these impassioned descriptions of duty or became very lewd, very quickly.”

“What is the purpose of your curiosity?”

Natalia stopped fiddling with his armor and brought her eyes up to his. “Peacekeepers don’t believe in love.”

“Ah.” Scorpius realized Natalia was attempting to uncover how  _ he _ specifically might feel about the topic of love given his heritage. “No, Peacekeepers aren’t supposed to love.”

“But Scarrans?” Natalia’s eyes tightened on his face. “From what was translated from Scarran was several books of their ancient poetry, and did you know they have this epic romance about a king that aids a princess in assassinating her husband? It is over four thousand cycles old. Apparently, it’s widely regarded as a foundation to their thoughts on love.”

“Natalia. I was born a prisoner to the Scarrans. I might have been raised under their culture, but they did not enforce my understanding of their poetry.”

“But you do know of this story?”

“Yes,” Scorpius admitted, “I do not think it bears resemblance to our situation regarding your deceased husband.”

“Oh that’s a relief,” Natalia pursed her lips, “I was starting to think you’d done something incredibly romantic by your own alien standards for me.”

Scorpius recognized the trap. He glared at Natalia for a microt. 

“It’s not applicable, Natalia, but if you really must know, Scarrans believe in a concept known as the Passions or the Flames. The Passions are supposed to be the foundation of heat within a Scarran. Building the passions is supposed to encourage the internal fire to burn hotter, and in that is a kind of...divinity. The concept was unhelpful for me as a child struggling with far too much heat already.”

“But that’s not a problem for you now?” Natalia’s purr arked into a question.

“No.” Scorpius hadn’t revisited these concepts in some time, “No, it is thankfully not an issue anymore. Let me remember,” he shut his eyes for a microt to dig up the old history lesson, “The Scarran Passions are Ambition, Legacy, Wrath, Devotion, Lust, and Ardor.” 

Scorpius listed the Passions themselves in Scarran, so for Natalia, the translation was only an approximation.

“If love exists for Scarrans, it would be somewhere in those concepts,” he concluded.

“There are some good words on that list,” Natalia moved a step closer. 

Her hand was still trapped against the banister by Scorpius’s own, which at this point was more of a hindrance than a help. He collected it off the metal poll and examined it for recent wounds along her knuckles. They were all scarred over with white, taunt flesh.

“You aren’t boxing anymore,” he stated simply. Her hand remained gripped in his and he used it to draw her closer to him. Now it remained trapped against his lower sternum. 

“Don’t change the topic,” Natalia huffed softly, “I’m trying to prove something to you.” 

“I am aware of what you are attempting to do, and I repeat, these concepts have no bearing on my current decisions or my past ones. I already know I can experience love, Natalia. Whether it is due to my Scarran genetics or my Sebacean ones or both or neither is insignificant.”

Natalia didn’t seem shocked or disturbed by his statement as other alien species might. Her lips were curled warmly in what seemed to be her only smile for this meeting. It was a smile that welcomed him back into her sphere and didn’t possess the same falsity he saw hiding in her old ones. This one contained old pain, but pain that was carried adjacent to hope.

Instead, Natalia recited, “I would split open my heart with a knife, place you within and seal my wound, that you might dwell there and never inhabit another…”

“Ah…” Scorpius peered at her dubiously for a moment before relaxing into acceptance, “Quoting that romance at a Scarran might lead one to believe you are attempting to seduce them.”

“Is it working?” Natalia was pressing against him fully at this point. The breeze tugged at her dress and her hair lifted across her face. To Scorpius she really was beguiling. A killer, a waitress, a boxer, a mother, a human, all entwined and more, she was Natalia.

“I am  _ possibly _ willing to be seduced,” he curled his arm around her waist.

Natalia continued the poem. “You would stay in my heart as I lived, and when I died you would end too, twisted in my center, at the foot of my burial.”

“Mmm… you read a poor translation,” he shut his eyes to find the Scarran words. It was a very long time ago, but they were still there somewhere in the back of his mind. In the slithering Scarran language, he shared the true passage. “—thus you would stay in my heart while I lived, and at my death you too would die in the entrails of my core, in the shadow of my tomb.”

“Gruesome,” her eyes pinched to wicked embers.

“Scarrans,” Scorpius surmised.

“Would it be disgustingly romantic if I kissed you?”

A satisfied smirk tugged at Scorpius’s mouth. “I’ll allow it.”

Her smile spread wider for a microt, and her nose wrinkled before her focus softened. She licked her bottom lip before she bent slightly down to press her mouth to his. It started hesitant, perhaps chaste even, but regardless it sent electric sparks through him. His arm around her waist coiled her tighter to him. He shut his eyes as if the lids became heavy while he cracked open his hot mouth to welcome hers. They stood entangled in the strange human ritual for an unknown amount of time, reuniting. 

When they stopped for a breath, which was a collective heave, Scorpius realized he was definitely beginning to enjoy kissing, which would have been a surprise to a younger Scorpius, but there remained one more action that would completely shock his past self. He kept Natalia possessively pressed against him. 

“Natalia…” He glanced in one direction and then the other as if some spy was eavesdropping. “I…” He grimaced and swallowed like something poisonous hit his tongue.

“You don’t have to say it, Scorpius.” She touched his chin. Her eyes were glittering at him again. “I know.”

“Don’t interrupt me.” He recentered. This didn’t have to be difficult, and she was waiting very patiently. Her focus was completely stuck on him. Neither of them breathed and in the pause, he murmured quietly. “I love you.”

She smiled so brightly, her gold tooth gleamed in the sun, before she kissed him again. A few times…a few more times. 

Perhaps Scorpius realized he enjoyed kissing too quickly, this was excessive.

“I love you too, Scorpius.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So real admission. I didn't write the poem! I'm just not that talented. It's a beautiful, old poem by Abu Muhammad Ibn Hazm called My Heart.
> 
> "  
> I would split open my heart  
> with a knife, place you  
> within and seal my would,  
> that you might dwell there  
> and never inhabit another  
> until the resurrection and  
> judgment day — thus you  
> would stay in my heart  
> while I lived, and at my death  
> you too would die in the  
> entrails of my core, in  
> the shadow of my tomb.  
> "
> 
> Anyway, next week will be the final chapter.


	26. Go Solo: Part 3

#  Go Solo

##  Part 3

After the confessionals, Natalia kept beaming. She wrapped her arms around Scorpius’s neck and leaned in close to his cheek. “We need consummation.”

“That can be arranged.” Scorpius stroked the column of her throat with his gloved fingertips. “My ship is undergoing maintenance at the depot.”

“You parked it?” Natalia tilted her head slightly. Her eyes were seeking.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.” He was now thumbing her carotid artery. It was difficult to forget Natalia’s idea of consummation. Arousal was already crackling through his body. A part of him thought this was perhaps too good to be true, and that any moment, the twist would be revealed. Natalia would disappear or he’d wake up alone in his own bed. But her flesh was pliant under his hand, and her smile was so honest, so caring, and soft. His subconscious would never be able to construct a fantasy like this.

Nezben, the small orange planet that Natalia occupied, was well-known for expedient ship repairs. Although his cruising yacht hadn’t sustained damage, a checkup was a reasonable explanation for visiting. He’d been more aware of his crews’ gossip over the last year, and making a detour to an out-of-the-way planet without reason would have created a stir among the ranks, especially if the meeting with Natalia proved fruitless. This apparently wasn’t the case. He glanced in the ship’s direction.

“Scorpius,” Natalia stated clearly. His eyes slipped back to her, “I submit myself to you. If you so desire, abuse me.”

Well.

They better get back to the ship then. Over the last year, he had definitely collected a list of possible arrangements in his darkest dreams and lurid states. 

“Come.”

Scorpius trapped her wrist in his grip and turned quickly away from the planet’s constructed river. Natalia let herself be tugged along. She knew the city’s streets back to the depot.

As they maneuvered through the orange buildings lining the streets, the same color as this world’s sand, Scorpius and Natalia were both quiet with the expanding excitement of two people preparing for future physicality but fearful that any odd phrase might break the possibility. 

They rounded a corner into the depot’s repair lot, and inside the open-air enclosure, several large ships sat on circular pads, but only one was black. Its insect-like, polished curves shone in the sunlight. The mechanics scurrying busily around its landing gear were like ants swarming over a possible meal for the hive. As Scorpius dragged her closer and closer, the ship loomed overhead. Her neck craned as she trotted behind.

“It’s incredible,” she gasped as she slipped into its shadow and the ship's bulk blocked out the blazing sun.

“It serves its purpose,” Scorpius's sights were set at the ship's descended gangway. The scale of the ship barely registered to him. Still, his voice was pridefully thick. He did commission the craft to these exact specifications after all. 

He heard Natalia’s smile in her hum of acknowledgment as they reentered the ship. Nomiq, Scorpius’s aide, was just inside the entrance with his tablet. The maintenance yard must’ve notified him of Scorpius’s return.

“Welcome back sir— Natalia?” Nomiq verbally fumbled as his eyes widened on the tall Russian. She waved to him by wiggling her fingertips. Her cheeks were already tingly with a blush. Natalia knew what this looked like...a tryst. 

Scorpius grit his teeth behind a tight-lipped scowl. “Nomiq. While I have returned, I am not to be disturbed. Is that understood?”

Nomiq bowed his head quickly, but before he could properly answer, Scorpius was already tugging Natalia away down the corridors. Natalia only caught a glimpse of Nomiq’s raised eyebrow as she was led deeper into the ship’s interior. They encountered no one else in the brief maze of hallways to Scorpius’s quarters. Natalia mused the staff was likely elsewhere, enjoying a needed planetside break while the ship was being serviced.

After a brief ride in a lift and a few turns along a plain, dark hallway, Scorpius paused briefly at a door console, typed in a key code, and revealed a spacious bedroom. The viewport showed the umber cityscape instead of what Natalia imagined was normally a sea of stars. The black tile reflected the sun’s warmth. Its beams barely touched the edges of an obsidian desk and further in the corner was a Peacekeeper-style cot. The door slid shut behind them, but Scorpius continued to pull her forward into the center of the space before dropping her now-sore wrist.

Her heart was suddenly pounding. She didn’t rub her released extremity because Scorpius didn’t say she could, and the tingling ache was deserved. Instead, she stood almost motionless waiting for his first command. Meanwhile, Scorpius had moved toward his desk and using a recessed console, lowered a tint over the window. The beams of light diminished to nothing. 

Then his focus returned to Natalia. He spent several long seconds evaluating every centimeter of her from her sandaled feet to her worked hands to her long neck and finally her face. Her nerves prickled with anticipation.

“Kneel.” 

Natalia lowered into a tall kneel. The tile was cold and unyielding under her knees. Scorpius moved closer to her and circled around to her back. With his index, he traced the peak of her shoulders from one to the other. He plucked at one of her thin dress straps.

“This dress is very appealing.”

“I hoped you would like it,” She said quietly. 

“I do.” He moved the strap over until it slipped off her shoulder. He bent to lick its place. The other strap received the same treatment. They floated lightly on her biceps. She sensed he was very close behind her using some remnant animal instinct long dissolved in human sentience, but he didn’t touch her for a strangely painful length of time. 

Natalia was about to turn around in concern and deal with the punishment of looking when he laid his gloved hands possessively on the sides of her neck. He splayed them down to the edges of her collarbone and drew them back up her throat. She stiffened.

“Do you fear me?” Scorpius murmured. 

She shook her head, but her pulse must be jumping under his hands. Her hair brushed against his hip. He had moved closer to her to brace her back against his thigh.

“Breathe out.”

She followed his command, and his hands constricted around her neck. At first, she settled calmly into losing her airway, but then panic rose as the moments stretched without breath. She willed herself steady even as her eyes winced shut and sweat beaded on her forehead. Seconds from passing out, her hand flailed backward to grip his belted ankle. He loosened his grip on her throat and she gasped for air. His hands kept her flush against him as she regained a normal breathing pattern. When she had recovered, he performed the same process again.

By the third time, she was loose-limbed but buzzing with adrenaline. Her heart was pounding as Scorpius released one hand from her neck and kneeled behind her. His other hand gripped her throat as a position guide and a threat for future suffocation. From behind her, he offered his gauntleted hand.

“Remove it.”

Natalia deftly flicked the belts open and shucked each finger out until his pale hand was bare. She imagined when he was born he had dark claws, but they had since then been permanently blunted. Each finger had a long straight scar that met at the back of his hand and marched under his sleeve. The temperature dermals didn’t work well on the fine tendons of his hands, so they were buried wires instead. She brought his fingers to her mouth and sucked each one.

“You overstep,” he sighed sharply against the crushed hair over her ear.

She removed his thumb from her mouth slowly. Her tongue tip lingered over the curve where his finger pad met his nail edge. Then she drew his hand down, slipped it under her dress, and pressed it between her legs.

Scorpius hissed. The grip on her neck tightened a fraction.

“Eager,” Scorpius’s voice rumbled in a tone Natalia always attributed to his faltering need. He nipped her ear. “You hope to tempt me with your lack of common undergarments.”

“I wanted to please you,” Natalia purred.

“Hmm…” Scorpius murmured noncommittally. He traced his fingers up her labia once before parting them to touch the trapped wetness of her core. She groaned and leaned further back against him. He continued to pulsate shallowly into her interior, aptly spreading her fluids up to the apex of her sex. When her clit was slick with herself, he applied an undulating pressure. 

Natalia gnawed her lower lip and whimpered. She was so close already. Even before the rounds of suffocation, before the admissions on the pier, before seeing him in the restaurant, she was electrified the moment she saw his response to her message. There hadn't been a single day this past cycle apart that she hadn't thought of him in one way or another, and now she was on his ship, in his quarters, being fingered bare-handed by this man that loved her. Her body was racked with pleasure. Scorpius was a rigid support behind her, unmoving and guiding and strong.

His hand pulled away from her cunt and she whined at its disappearance only to have wet fingers press into her mouth.

“I said, you overstepped.” Scorpius chastised, lightly hissing. His voice was already gravely. 

Natalia sucked at his soaked fingers, deliriously happy, but shivering with want.

Scorpius huffed against her neck. Natalia could feel his heated breath as he deliberated. He withdrew his hand from her lips to unzip the back of her dress. His touch was light over the shoulder blades and lower ribs until her top fell down to her waist. Once freed, his hand snaked around and settled on stroking her breast.

“Now the other one.” He presented his second glove, which she unbuckled nimbly. 

Before she could lavish her tongue on this hand he removed it from her grip to ruck up the hem of her dress over her ass. He stroked the curve of flesh from the back of her thighs to her sacrum before gripping the heft of it and massaging it roughly. Natalia sighed heavily. Scorpius felt her rumbling breath in his hand under her breast. Although he had aspirations to drag this out, make her writhe from unspent desire, having Natalia back in his hands again was affecting him stronger than he initially thought. His show of force was corroding. It could be the smell of her arousal, impacting him like this, or… the confessions from earlier perhaps.

Scorpius smacked her butt cheek sharply, and Natalia, infuriatingly or charmingly, giggled.

“Help, I’m being beaten,” Natalia whispered through a smothered smile.

He slapped her ass harder and growled into her neck. This time she groaned and arched her back in a way that pressed her hips into his. Her tailbone bucked into his codpiece, which was starting to feel like a hindrance. His resistance to simply taking her was wearing down. There would be time later to enjoy the minutiae of foreplay. 

“Get up,” he snapped without venom. 

She followed his command and stood.

“Sit on the desk,” Scorpius gestured with his chin at the desk in question. She obeyed as well, facing him, legs slightly open. Natalia smartly lifted the dress skirt before sitting on the obsidian surface. Scorpius fit between her legs and dragged her to him.

“Remove my armor.” 

Natalia immediately started on the fasteners at his pauldrons. He shrugged them off onto the ground, and she refocused on his mantle, which he threw over the desk. She kissed his jawline as she worked open his breastplate. When she lifted this free, he pressed her back onto the desk.

“Eager,” she nipped into his neck.

He didn’t have a verbal response to that. Instead, he took off his codpiece and rubbed his  _ eagerness _ onto her inner thigh. New desire swelled in him almost painfully. It had been so long since he had experienced Natalia this way, and there were others in the interim. Strangely he regretted that now.

“Natalia…” he grumbled out, suddenly nervous, “I confess I...have fornicated with others. Some time ago but if this voids our terms…”

Natalia was looking hazily at his leather-wrapped neck. She dragged her nails over the ridges in thought.

“I’m surprised you are telling me. I can’t be mad about it. You warned me, and we weren’t together,” she murmured softly, “I was tempted sometimes. Sex is simple after all, but… I was focusing on myself. It would be a disservice to my goals during that time.” She kissed him with a fleeting softness on his grim mouth and fell back against the table. Her hair pooled around her face. “I’m glad you came back to me and wasn’t swept away by some Peacekeeper vixen.”

“I admit, I tried to be… but they paled in comparison.” 

“Mmm, a compliment,” Natalia wiggled against his arousal. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Thank you for telling me, but enough of this talk of others. I want you. I’ve wanted you for a long time, and I’ve kept you waiting. Will you keep me waiting now?” She turned her dark eyes so pleading, it twanged Scorpius like he was an instrument’s string.

He ground against her opening. The scales along the underside of his cock gave her pleasure in the past. She groaned into his gorget. Her legs wrapped around the back of his belted legs. He did it again to see her squirm desperately.

“Please…” she keened, and pet his bottom lip.

Scorpius trapped her slithering hips against the edge of the desk and positioned the head of his erection at her slick entry. He pressed into her in a single fluid thrust. Seated fully, he snarled in pleasure. His spine prickled with it. He didn’t wish to hurry through this despite how tightly her pussy clenched around him. His hips rolled slowly against her. 

Natalia hummed as her eyes fluttered closed. Scorpius crowded her down against the desk, pushing into her. He grit his teeth. She felt very good. His eyes winced hazily.

“Harder,” she whimpered.

Scorpius dug his nails into the soft flesh of her hips and forced deeper with more strength. His back hunched over her, head hanging. He grimaced.

“Harder,” Natalia’s hand fisted over his shoulder blades. Her voice was a seduction.

“Ah,” he wheezed, but he charged into a fiercer pace. He released one hand to prop himself over her on his elbow.

“Fuck,” Natalia threw her head back, teeth grinding. 

“Tell me again,” Scorpius drooled on her collarbone through snarled teeth. He was on the brink of finishing. From her clenching interior, she was close as well. His blue eyes narrowed on her blissed-out, hazy eyes. 

Their bodies slapped together. Natalia open-mouth panted, but she regained a microt of composure to touch his sharp cheek. 

“I love you.” 

Ultimately it was a simple statement, but so relished.

With this decadent admission, Scorpius’s trigger was pulled. Sensation pooled like liquid fire into his groin and he throbbed his completion into her, practically squeezed of breath. Natalia’s insides gripped him in return as she arched into him one final time with a pleasant guttural yell.

Scorpius remained propped above her on his elbows. He watched her come back to herself and her eyes opened to meet his. They breathed in satisfaction together. Scorpius nuzzled into her neck and nipped its base. She wrapped her arms tighter, bringing him down over her.

It made sense that Peacekeepers wanted nothing to do with this emotion. This kind of feeling was unbalanced and was difficult to properly control or curtail even by the wielder. Scorpius stroked her hair. She turned to look at him and fingered his chin strap.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette would you?”

“First drawer on the right.”

She kissed his cheek before rolling him onto his back. It was unnecessary to straddle his thigh to make the reach but he did get a very enjoyable view of her bare chest. 

“Wow, there is only one left. Are you sure I can have it?” She said after a second of scrambling through the drawer. Meanwhile, Scorpius had bit lightly into the underside of one of her breasts, so he loathfully unclamped from the soft curve to speak.

“Natalia, it’s yours.”

She smirked around the filtered end and lit it propped above him. His hands trailed under her dress hem, up her thigh. The cracked scar of her c section was barely visible over the edge of the crumpled dress that drooped around her like a loosely belted sash. He didn’t expect to see it ever again, and seeing it now, he realized he still felt a kinship to it that couldn’t quite be explained.

“Wait...this really is mine isn’t it? My packet of cigarettes?”

Scorpius nodded, transfixed by her lower abdomen.

“It tastes like a cycle old.” But she rolled back down next to him regardless, “I can’t believe you kept my cigarettes.”

She offered the lit stick to him and he accepted it.

“Do you want to know what silly thing I kept?” Natalia simpered, eyes intently fixated at his placid, post-coital face.

Scorpius side-gazed at her. She took that as confirmation and palmed through her wrinkled dress for what appeared to be a pocket. She drew out a small, familiar piece of metal, slightly crushed but no larger than a jewelery bead.

“See?”

“Yes,” Scorpius smiled at the reappearance of the bullet that Dimitri fired into his chest. It was very fortunate that so many humanoids thought his heart was on the left, but the two scars that speckled his chest from the mistake would eventually become their own constellation if he wasn’t more careful in the future.

“I kept it for the memories.” Natalia fiddled with the bullet above her between two fingers. “They were good memories.” She collected it back into the palm of her hand and rested it on her own heart. 

Scorpius extinguished the cigarette on his tongue. Natalia giggled. With the ember out, he propped himself over her again. She remained incredibly enticing and he was beginning to think of other licentious things he could do with her prone form.

“So… would you like to come to dinner?” Natalia simpered wryly despite how contrasting her thoughts were to his. “It’s too late to set an aspic, but I could heat some goulash. Andi would be happy to see you.”

His life had taken a strange turn. Talking about children while in the throes of copulation, but eating Natalia’s goulash again was very inviting, more so than the food on the ship, and of course, the company was better. 

He nodded once. She glanced down seeking the next few words carefully.

“Maybe it's too soon, but…would you like to live with us again?”

Scorpius plucked a sweaty hair from her face and moved it back behind her ear.

“Hmm...it will require scheduling, but that would be preferred. I’ve heard it is difficult to raise a child in space.”

“Yes, no school, no other children,” Apparently picking up on his increasing arousal, her instincts were always impressively responsive, Natalia began working on removing his cowl. “Also, perhaps it will be better to discuss over dinner, but I have a business idea. I was acquiring funding. However, maybe you want to buy in?”

Scorpius peered at her and blinked once, “Ahhhh...that’s why you’ve been speaking with Darvek.”

“Union President Darvek is a powerful friend to have, Scorpius. As you know,” Natalia beamed at him as he freed his head from his mask.

“What are you looking to trade? Cigarettes? Vodka?...Weapons?” Scorpius raised his chest higher so she could get at the fasteners of his doublet.

“Those would be wise things to bring to the Uncharted, but they are already here,” Natalia reasoned.

“What then?” Scorpius tilted his head.

“Chocolate,” Natalia slipped her hands against his dermal-pecked skin.

Scorpius snorted.

“How could I resist,” And he bent to lick a trail up her throat, “an offer to buy into such an excellent idea?”

* * *

Natalia and Scorpius lived together on and off as lovers for going on two hundred and fifty cycles until Natalia eventually passed away in her sleep. Scorpius would live for much longer. She was a good businesswoman, but at some point after amassing an impressive fortune, settled down to become a well-respected portrait painter. 

They never married, but they did spend three months once sharing a single consciousness in a bonding ritual that Scorpius suggested as an interesting alternative. Afterward, Natalia gave Scorpius a  _ myriad circlet _ , a silver collar that could not be removed without the myriad’s destruction. She even chose a material that conducted heat poorly so it stayed cool around his neck. Scorpius, in retaliation, bought Natalia a moon made of nothing but diamonds. Natalia thought it was quite sweet, but didn’t know exactly what to do with it.

Eventually, Natalia’s relationship with her son, Dimitri II, improved. He relocated to space for work, and while their communication was always bouts of unhappiness and prone to arguments, Natalia did participate in his life and the rest of his family.

At some point, Scorpius and Natalia produced an offspring named Scorpio. Despite Scorpius’s sterility, they were inhabiting the Uncharted Territory and viable DNA was possible to create if one’s wallet was deep enough. After a strenuous genetic selection and a prosthetic incubation process, Scorpio was born a healthy Scarran/Sebacean/Human hybrid. Even though Scorpius was tentative up until the last moment, he agreed, as with most parents, that his son was the most perfect entity in all of creation.

At some point, these two weren’t monogamous and they were the most frightening couple ever seeking a third. 

Two hundred and fifty years is a long life, and in the Uncharted, even a short one is very weird. Opinions are forged and then broken. Dreams bud like spring leaves only to curl and brown to be blown away in the fall. But all of this is a story for another time, another life, so I hope you enjoyed this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've thought a lot about this ending. It has been a long time coming. I started working on this story in March of last year, and what you are reading is the fourth draft of it. For a long time, I didn't think I had the right attention span for writing something the length of a novel, so I admit I'm very proud of this story at its 224-page length. Parts of it are even good! Which continuously shocks me! 
> 
> Last year was a testament to how writing can get people through some tough things. It's weird, in retrospect, the thing that carried me through the most was Scorpius and the weird universe he inhabits. I'm going to miss writing him. This story is probably the swan song on Farscape fanfiction in general. Ya'll are tough to entertain. I never know if I'm hitting any of your sweet spots. It's either you want G-rated fluff drabbles or the most deliciously depraved of smut. No matter what you like, you enjoy it anonymously.
> 
> I'm aware I don't exactly write the most adored version of Scorpius either. Not many scapers have asked for a queer, switch, and consensual Scorpius. I'm reading all the tasty, aggressive, dominating ones too. But slowly. They rock, but I feel like the health snack compared to those stories, and a long-winded one at that. Like a bowl of bran, one is miserably chomping through.
> 
> I am also aware that OC women paired with main characters are often stand-in's for reader projection. Natalia is hard to project on. The original creation of her was..."Scorpius should date a James Bond Villain," and I picked the Natalia and Onatopp from Goldeneye, smushed them together. She's a lot more than that now. I'm super infatuated with her. She's a babe and a half. I'll miss her too.
> 
> It took a lot of convincing from Iterations that I should start publishing this story, and once again, I'm glad she convinced me. It taught me so so so much. Whenever I sat down to work on it, I was whisked away. It was a true pleasure, unlike some other stories I've cranked out. I will miss it.
> 
> To be honest, I'm surprised anyone made it this far. If you're reading this ending note, I'm amazed truly. If anything, at least I'll stop lording over the Farscape tag! Instead, this story will sink like a wicked ship, and people will have to travel to it and pray there is gold somewhere in its belly as they take big lung-fulls of air to dive down. I'm blathering now. Thanks again.


End file.
